Anecdotes of public men; by John W. Forney.

12 ANECDOTES OF PUBLIC MEN.
should sleep well and rise with the lark at the purpling of the
dawn-dropping no syllable in favor of General Scott-the serenaders retired as if they had heard a funeral sermon. I walked
to my editorial den and wrote a leader on the scene, so full of
the emptiness of human ambition and the ingratitude of political parties. The following verse from Byron closed the article:
"As the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart,
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel;
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest,
Drank the last life-blood of his bleeding breast."
Franklin Pierce succeeded to the Presidency in 1853, aided
by many Old-line Whigs and by most of the Anti-slavery Democrats now in the Republican ranks. The political events of
his administration are historical. Let me say a word about the
man. He was at once the kindest, most courteous, and most
considerate public officer I ever knew. As President he was a
model of high breeding. Receptive, cordial, hospitable to his
political friends, he delighted to welcome his political adversaries, and to make them at home. Let me give one specimen
of his liberality. It was my misfortune to differ frpm the Southern leaders at an early day, and they resolved to defeat my reelection as Clerk of the House. My mistaken "Forrest Letter"
was made their pretext. I say mistaken, for, though I wrote it
with the most honest purpose, I did not venture to defend the
unjust but plausible construction that I had written it to obtain
false testimony against a woman. My friends, and none more
than Mr. Forrest himself, knew the motive that prompted me;
but I have never stopped to explain it. That letter was seized
upon by the Southern leaders, who knew my settled determination to resist the further encroachments of slavery; and they