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as an official vindication, an intimation that the country still believed in him and regarded his fame, had not forgotten his services.
When the reparation was withheld he suffered proportionally.
But he refused to reveal his emotion.
A day or two before the decision he declared that he did not expect the passage of the bill; and when the defeat was announced he made no remark.
That evening he played cards with his family and displayed unusual spirit and gayety; but all saw through the mask.
All joined, however, in the deception that deceived no one.
None spoke of the disappointment; and a grim interest in whist apparently absorbed the party that was heart-broken for him who permitted neither wife nor child to come beneath the cloak that concealed his wound.
All he said was that the bill had failed on the 16th of February, the anniversary of the fall of Fort Donelson.
The next day he was worse, and in a week the gravest fears seemed near realization.
He himself appeared conscious of the approach of the end. He had all winter been considering and discussing the choice of a publisher for his book, but had made no decision.
Now he came to a conclusion, and in the first week in March the agreement was signed with his publishers, Messrs. C. L. Webster & Co.
At the same time the family thought they could no longer withhold from his daughter, Mrs. Sartoris, the knowledge of her father's condition.
She was in England, and they had of course notified her of his illness, but, in the hope of amelioration or respite, had deferred the announcement of its critical character.
But at last they wrote and urged her to hasten to him. After his second relapse they telegraphed, and she started for his bedside.
They were still unwilling to inform General Grant that she had been summoned, lest he should be depressed by the certainty that they believed the end to be near; they only told him she had written to say that she was coming; but the amiable concealment hardly deceived
S. S. Scranton and Co., Hartford, 1887.
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