I.
At the age of thirty-nine, Grant was an obscure failure in a provincial town. To him and his family, for whom he could not earn needful bread, his father had become a last shelter against the struggle of life. Not all the neighbours knew his face. At the age of forty-three his picture hung in the homes of grateful millions. His name was joined with Washington's. A little while, and we see him step down, amid discordant reproach, from Washington's chair, having helplessly presided over scandal and villany blacker than the countery had thus far witnessed. Next, his private integrity is darkly overcast, and the stroke kills him. But death clears his sky. At the age of sixty-three, Grant died; and the people paused to mourn and honour him devotedly. All the neighbours know his face today.