"Not so much change there," said the President; "but one becomes
accustomed to heavy weather."
"Lord Roscoe is feeling happier, I hope," said I.
The President answered, dropping the "Lord Roscoe" comicality, and
speaking rapidly and seriously, with a flush of excitement: "Conkling,
after ten years of absolute despotism in New York--for Grant
did everything for him, and Hayes tried to comfort him--got the
elephantiasis of conceit. We read that gentlemen in Oriental
countries, having that disease in its advanced stage, need a
wheelbarrow or small wagon to aid their locomotion when they go out
to walk--and the population think there is something divine in it.
Conkling thought if he should go on parade in New York, and place the
developments of his vanity fully on exhibition, the whole people would
fall down and worship the phenomenon. But he was mistaken, for they
soon saw it was a plain, old-fashioned case of sore-head."
Then the President, having exhausted the elephantiasis as a divine
manifestation, expressed regrets that there had been such contentions
among those who should be friends of the administration; and repeated
his view of that which was due to the actual trust the people had
placed in him, and of which he could not honorably divest himself.
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