Whitelaw Reid was the only one of us who clearly understood the situation and thoroughly knew what he was about.

He came to me and said: "I have won, and you people have lost.

I shall expect that you stand by the agreement and meet me as my guests at dinner to-night.

But if you do not personally look after this the others will not be there." I was as badly hurt as any, but a bond is a bond and I did as he desired, succeeding partly by coaxing and partly by insisting, though it was devious work.
Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid's dinner.
Horace White looked more than ever like an iceberg, Sam Bowles was diplomatic but ineffusive, Schurz was as a death's head at the board; Halstead and I through sheer bravado tried to enliven the feast.
But they would none of us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly, reformers hoist by their own petard.
VI The reception by the country of the nomination of Horace Greeley was as inexplicable to the politicians as the nomination itself had been unexpected by the Quadrilateral.

The people rose to it.