Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[429] book would secure. He did not say much, from which I knew that my words would be considered; I was sure that he appreciated their motive and did not resent their freedom. The only utterance I can recall in reply was, ‘I am not going to commit suicide.’ But I changed the subject and he spoke cheerfully and very kindly to me on other themes. We were driving together from the doctor's house when this conversation occurred, and on our return he went to work with renewed vigor. I told Mrs. Grant what I meant to do in advance, and reported the result afterward, and she approved it all.

He enjoyed his labors now, and quite got the literary fever for a while. He liked to have his pages read aloud to the family in the evening, so that he might hear how they, sounded and receive their comments. He worked, however, for the most part from ten or eleven o'clock in the morning until two or three in the afternoon, and sometimes again later in the day. Once in a while General Tower, a comrade in the Mexican War, came in and discussed the chapters describing the capture of Vera Cruz or the march on Mexico. Sometimes Mr. Chaffee listened to the political passages, and begged the General not to emasculate them, but to say all he thought without fear or favor.

Daily about one o'clock he was interrupted by his grandchildren, who stopped as they passed to their lunch, and looked in at the open door, not entering till he saw them and summoned them. Their prattle and kisses were always welcome, and made me think that the very misfortune which brought them to his house had its compensations. He took a peculiar pleasure in their society, and when at one time it was thought that they disturbed his labors, and they were told not to visit him, he was distressed at the omission and revoked the order. They came, indeed, like a burst of light into the sick man's study, three of them, dancing, gamboling, laughing—as pretty a brood of merry, graceful grandchildren