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[109]
and he endeavored to persuade Lowell to do this.
Lowell went so far as to take legal advice on the subject, but his counsellor informed him that since the election of John Quincy Adams it had been virtually decided that an elector must cast his vote according to the ticket on which he was chosen.
When the electors met at the Parker House in January, 1877, Lowell deposited his ballot for Hayes and Wheeler, and the slight applause that followed showed that his colleagues were conscious of the position he had assumed.
When President Hayes appointed Lowell to be Minister to Spain, Lowell remarked that he did not see why it should have come to him. It really came to him through his friend E. R. Hoar, of Concord, who was brother-in-law to Secretary Evarts.
His friends wondered that he should accept the position, but the truth was that Lowell at this time was comparatively poor.
His taxes had increased, and his income had diminished.
He complained to C. P. Cranch that the whole profit from the sale of his books during the preceding year was less than a hundred dollars, and he thought there ought to be a law for the protection of authors.
The real trouble was hard times.
He did not like Madrid, and at the end of a year wrote that it seemed impossible for him to endure the life there any longer.
Evarts gave
1905. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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