A day or two, however, after the Schurz dinner, a reporter
of a prominent newspaper in Boston asked me for an interview
about the matter, to which I assented. He said: "Have you
seen the speeches of President Eliot and Dr. Clarke and Mr.
Codman at the Schurz banquet?" I said, "Yes." He asked me:
"What do you think of them?" I said: "Well, it is very natural
that these gentlemen should stand by Mr. Schurz, who has
been their leader and political associate. President Eliot's
speech reminds me of Baillie Nichol Jarvie when he stood
up for his kinsman, Rob Roy, in the Town Council of Glasgow
when some of the Baillie's enemies had cast in his teeth
his kinship with the famous outlaw. 'I tauld them,' said
the Baillie, 'that barring what Rob had dune again the law,
and that some three or four men had come to their deaths by
him, he was an honester man than stude on ony of their shanks.'"
This ended the incident, so far as I was concerned.
To draw an adequate portraiture of Charles Devens would require
the noble touch of the old masters of painting or the lofty
stroke of the dramatists of Queen Elizabeth's day.
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