Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-11-28
PARADOX OF THE PRESIDENCY
Many Have It Forced on Them, While
 Others Cannot Reach It.

As the moth fiutters wildly around the burning candle, and is finally consumed in the blaze that hypnotizes it, so have we seen some of our greatest states men drawn by more than hypnotic at traction, like furious mania, toward the White House, only to die at last untouched and disappointed, burned up, as it were by vaulting ambition of realization.
 So Webster, Scott, Seward, Chase, Clay, Morton, Greeley and Blaine pur- sued the ignis fatrus to the end! Others had the great prize forced upon them, accepted it reluctantly and with regret, as did Grant, Hayes, Garfield, McKin- ley and Roosevelt. It is history that Mckinley put it aside in 1888 and would not have it all. The suggestion was not only painful but repulsive and even offensive. So with Garfield in 1880. He did not want it. It was forced on him. Garfield had to be fairly draft ed, conscripted, in 1880, and was deeply hurt over it. His reluctance and re- gret he expressed freely to all of us. He was Senator-eleet, the climax of his ambition, and he would thousand times have preferred to see John Sher- man nominated, though sherman never saw it that way. In the last conver- sation I had with sherman, in bis own house, in 1899. after she had left the Mckinley Cabinet in passion. he spoke to me very bitterly, not only of Me Kinley's s treatment of him, but of what he called to the last "Garfield s betray- al of him in 1880.
 He was mistaken. Garfield was deep ly disappointed and melancholy over the result and tried to induce the conven- ton to nominate some other man, first of all sherman, for Garfield was true as steel, loyal, honest, and sincere to a fault
 As a member of the Ohio legislature, met Hayes every day of the electoral contest as it dragged for months through the dreary winter of 1sT6-77, and I know how anxious we all were that he abide the result and fight if need be for the office, if the commis- sion should award it to him. At times he was on the point of throwing up the sponge, handing it all over to Tilden, and so ending the disputed election. In the first place we had forced the nom ination on him--which he accepted re- luctantly, but never sought and now we young men saw prospect of danger, that he would render all our efforts mug atory by surrendering to TiIden, who had big majority of the popular vote and an apparent majority in the elec- toral college on the face of the returns. Those were critical days in February, 1877, when the contest still ragged in Congress and before the electoral com mission and the country was on the verge of civil war. Grant alone saved us from all that. His mighty name, power and prestige alone saved us from civil war and made the inauguration of Hayes at all possible.
 Mckinley was still young man. as ages of statesmen go-as q leader of the house in 1888 and did not desire and squarely refused, the Presidency, easily within his reach sherman, the general, could have had the prize of tered him in 1876 and again in 1888, and urged on him. But he put it aside with such emphasis as left no doubt that he would refuse nomination even if unan. imous.
 So you see there have been several great men of our day who had no de. sire for the place at all, were not at tracted by it's glitter or glory, and others who sought it madly, and never reached it at all, like Bryan. Whence it seems settled that he who seeks shall not find it, but some who seek it not will have it thrust upon them! Why it is so, don t know, but I know it is so.-Pri vate Daniel. in the Pittsburg Gazette. Times.