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To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
CHICAGO, Nov. 12, '79.
Livy darling, it was a great time. There were perhaps thirty people on
the stage of the theatre, and I think I never sat elbow-to-elbow with so
many historic names before. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield, Pope,
Logan, Augur, and so on. What an iron man Grant is! He sat facing the
house, with his right leg crossed over his left and his right boot-sole
tilted up at an angle, and his left hand and arm reposing on the arm of
his chair--you note that position? Well, when glowing references were
made to other grandees on the stage, those grandees always showed
a trifle of nervous consciousness--and as these references came
frequently, the nervous change of position and attitude were also
frequent. But Grant!--he was under a tremendous and ceaseless
bombardment of praise and gratulation, but as true as I'm sitting here
he never moved a muscle of his body for a single instant, during 30
minutes! You could have played him on a stranger for an effigy.
Perhaps he never would have moved, but at last a speaker made such
a particularly ripping and blood-stirring remark about him that the
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