A Few Words About an Ex-Mayor [excerpt]

High public office is generally a thankless task.
If its incumbent makes one mis-step he thereafter, in the minds of many men, lives in the shadow sometimes of wrong and always of disapproval. The good he has done is absolutely forgotten; the evil, if evil it be, hangs over him like a pall, unless some great event concerning him arouses the honest impulse of the real people who are not politicians and care little for them. Grover Cleveland would be a greater man to-day than he ever will be if he had met Czolgosz instead of the universally beloved man—beloved regardless of politics—whose career was prematurely ended by a maggot.