Never did a man live so long in a foreign country and take on so few of its thoughts and ways.

He threw himself into the anti-slavery movement upon the crest of the wave; the flowing sea carried him quickly from one distinction to another; the ebb tide, which found him in the Senate of the United States, revealed to his startled senses the creeping, crawling things beneath the surface; partyism rampant, tyrannous and corrupt; a self-willed soldier in the White House; a Blaine, a Butler and a Garfield leading the Representatives, a Cameron and a Conkling leading the Senate; single-minded disinterestedness, pure unadulterated conviction, nowhere.
Jobs and jobbing flourished on every side.

An impossible scheme of reconstruction was trailing its slow, putrescent length along.

The revenue service was thick with thieves, the committees of Congress were packed with mercenaries.

Money-making in high places had become the order of the day.