graphed protest from three prominent Missouri Democrats caused Mr. Cleveland to rub Mr. Francis' name off the slate. The time came when the President found among those most hostile to him in his party the three Missourians who had caused the rejection of Mr. Francis. Three years later, in the summer of 1896, Mr. Francis was asked to take the Secretaryship of the Interior. His term of office was not quite one year, but in that time he added millions of acres to the forest reserves and instituted reforms in the service which were ratified and continued in the McKinley administration.

How Hitchcock Broke the Precedents.

Ethan A. Hitchcock was one of the notable surprises of his generation in public life. In November, 1896, a group of Missouri Congressman en route to Washington stopped over at Canton. Mr. McKinley was President-elect. Missouri Democrats had, two years previously, in 1894, like Peter, "gone a-fishing." The congressional delegation was largely Republican. These Representatives from Missouri were on their way to Washington to serve the short session of what was for most of them their only term in Congress. They stopped at Canton to pay their respects to the President-elect. "Pay their respects," has covered more political devilment than any other phrase in the English language. Collectively the party asked Mr. McKinley to choose from Missouri a member for his Cabinet, and individually the party blushed modestly. Mr. McKinley was kind. He talked pleasantly, as he always did, and encouragingly as he did not always mean to do. But when the conversation reached particulars the President suddenly asked:

"Gentlemen! How would Mr. Hitchcock do?"

The Congressmen went on to Washington and immediately confided to a newspaper correspondent that Mr. McKinley was "considering Henry Hitchcock for a place in the Cabinet." And the correspondent promptly wired to his paper. The next day came reflection. Henry Hitchcock had been during the Harrison administration very close to an appointment on the United States Supreme Bench -so close in fact that for some days the Presidential mind had hesitated between the Missouri lawyer and another man. Decision in favor of the latter had been made only for the reason that he was a Federal judge and was from a Republican State. It did not seem probable that Henry Hitchcock, whose tastes and qualifications so eminently fitted him for the Supreme Bench, would be under consideration for a Cabinet appointment. The members of the Missouri group who had called at Canton were seen and catechised. They were asked to repeat exactly what Mr. McKinley had said. They agreed that he had asked them:

"How would Mr. Hitchcock do?"

Did the President-elect say Mr. Henry Hitchcock? No; they were quite sure he did not. Did he mention Mr. Hitchcock's first name at any time during the conversation? No; they could not recall that he did. But who else could he have had in mind but Henry Hitchcock? So questioned the Congressmen.

It was no special test of memory to recall that when Mr. McKinley as chairman of the ways and means committee was framing his famous tariff bill a few years before, he had sought information and advice from Ethan A. Hitchcock upon certain schedules. It was remembered that Mr. Hitchcock had spent some time in Washington helping Mr. McKinley, and that Mr. McKinley had expressed

strongly his admiration of Mr. Hitchcock's clear-headed, business-like ways. Therefore the Washington dispatches a day later withdrew Mr. Henry Hitchcock from the Cabinet possibility and substituted Mr. Ethan A. Hitchcock. Not until the correctness of this was confirmed from Canton did the Missouri Congressmen admit their misunderstanding.

But in the abundance of advice Mr. McKinley laid aside his earliest impressions and intentions which were his best. He constructed a Cabinet from motives of political expediency, and it speedily fell to pieces. Mr. Ethan A. Hitchcock went to Russia as ambassador only to be recalled and put at the head of the Department of the Interior, when Mr. Cornelius N. Bliss, after a few months' trial of the duties, had given up in disgust.

Phenomenal is the word that describes the career of Mr. Hitchcock as a Cabinet minister. He was Secretary of the Interior to two Presidents as dissimilar as any two men who have occupied the White House. He won the unreserved confidence and the unstinted commendation of both of them. He held one of the hardest places to fill in the Cabinet. He held it longer than any predecessor since the department was established.

Switzler's Record.

One of the notably successful officials in the first Cleveland administration was William F. Switzler of Missouri. He filled the position of chief of the bureau of statistics. His predecessor, Mr. Nimmo, was retired because of what in those days was called "offensive partisanship." The Missourian made no such mistake. Scores and scores of letters, asking information, came to the bureau during the campaign.

"Please send me the best figures you've got to sustain the Democratic party on this question," was the way editors and orators wrote to Colonel Switzler, never doubting, apparently, that this campaign thunder would be forthcoming to order.

Colonel Switzler answered all of these letters scrupulously, but the form was the same.

"This bureau," he wrote, "has neither Democratic nor Republican statistics. The multiplication table is non-partisan.”

President Cleveland's historic tariff reform message and Colonel Switzler's exhaustive report on the wool industry appeared almost simultaneously. This created much talk. The colonel had been at work and had had his agents at work for several months upon the investigation. He had made a wonderful collection of statistics and facts about wool-growing in the United States. He had traced analytically the relations between the tariff and the growth of this industry. The results he launched upon the public, as fortune would have it, just as the President confronted his condition and declared for free wool.

"I suppose hundreds of people have asked me if my wool industry report conflicts with the President's position," said the old statistician one day. "My answer to them is that I don't know whether it does or not. It is not my province to say. I am not here to draw deductions from, or build arguments upon, the statistics I collate. 'Hew to the line, and let the chips fall where they may' is the principle upon which I gather figures."

"Statisticians are born, not made," the gray-haired Missourian continued. "This work calls for peculiar aptitude. Some of the ablest men in Congress couldn't administer the business of this bureau. I don't suppose Senator Vest could fill my place three hours, and I expect he would tell you so if you asked him. Why? Simply because his mind does not run to figures and their meaning. The work doesn't call for ability so much as for a peculiar kind of mental action. To me figures are a delight, and alway have been. I can see poetry in a statistical table which covers the broadside of a page. I go down and up columns of figures with the absorbing interest a philosopher pores over a treatise on his specialty. There is no novel so fascinating to me as a statistical report. I love figures."

CHAPTER XXIII.

SOME MISSOURIANS ABROAD.

Standard Time-A Lesson in Courtesy at Washington-Missouri the Mother of StatesSponsorship for Oregon-F. N. Judson's Comments-The Four Sublettes-A Mighty Bear Hunter-Stephen B. Elkins and the Guerrillas-Impressions of Quantrell—A Divided Family-The Case of Juan Gid-Misadventures of a Colony-Four Missourians in Statuary Hall-Oregon's First Senator-A St. Louis Boy's Ambition-Pat Donan of Devil's Lake-Missouri's Greatest Poet-Eugene Field, Editor and Actor-"Most Studious Designer of Pranks"-The Real Tom Sawyer's Recollections-Private Sam Clemens in the War-Professor of Anecdote-Missourians as Constitution Makers-Ten Members of Washington's Convention—The Left Wing of Price's Army-Governor Samuel T. Hauser-Ashley, the Explorer-First Knowledge of Utah—Jim Bridger—The Duke of Cimarron-Flush Days on the Maxwell Grant-Kit Carson-The Discovery of Yellowstone Park-John Colter's Veracity—Missouri Diplomats-Law and Order in MontanaJudge Alexander Davis and the Vigilantes-The Court of Alder Gulch-Death Penalty for Contempt of Court-What a Missouri Home-Coming Would Mean-Emily Grant Hutchings' Suggestion.

It is a fact that many of the best people of Missouri have gone to Texas to help civilize and Christianize it. In the State of Texas one is never out of sight of Missourians. A decade or two ago the census. showed that the majority of the people of Oregon were born in Missouri. The people of Washington are mainly of Oregon stock. Montana is a child of Missouri. The first charter concession granted by the King of Spain for the settlement of Americans in Texas was to Moses Austin, of Missouri. That was afterward confirmed to his son, Stephen F. Austin, by the American republic. The Austins gave their name to the capital of Texas. The most influential man in the financial history of the Union, Hamilton excepted, perhaps, was our Missouri Senator, Benton. There is a fine field for some historians to trace the impress of Missouri and Missourians west of the Mississippi River.-Governor Lon V. Stephens of Missouri.

Missouri produced a scientist of international fame who could walk into a railroad station, sit down in the telegraph operator's chair, put his finger on the key, send a cannon ball express on its way dodging passenger trains, through freights, local freights and all other kinds of traffic, and bring the flyer into the terminal on the minute. That was Dr. Henry Smith Pritchett, a native of Howard County, who was superintendent of the coast survey at Washington before he was forty, perhaps the youngest executive in the history of that department. Massachusetts called this many-sided Missourian to be the head of the famous Institute of Technology. And later Andrew Carnegie called him to take charge of the foundation. For his scientific attainments he was the recipient of one of the most remarkable collections of honorary degrees. Hamilton College, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Williams, the University of Michigan, the University of Toronto, Brown University, and Miami University conferred upon him the degree of LL.D.

About 1848 the railroad managers of the country agreed that conditions demanded standard time. They cut the map of the United States into sections