Flower has been a member of the State executive committee every year since that time, and has given valuable aid to the Democratic party managers. In 1885 Mr. Flower attended the Democratic State convention as a looker-on; not as a candidate for office. The convention nominated David B. Hill for Governor. Several delegates had asked Mr. Flower to accept the nomination for Lieutenant-Governor, but he refused. He left Saratoga the morning before the convention adjourned, but when he arrived at his country home in Watertown he found that he had been unanimously nominated for LieutenantGovernor. He immediately declined the honor, stating his reasons for doing so. The State committee was called together, and nominated in his place Col. Jones, of Binghamton; he who "pays the freight."

Mr. Flower, in 1882, was made chairman of the Democratic Congressional Committee, and ran the campaign that year that resulted in a majority in the house of fifty for his party. In the presidential campaign of 1888 Mr. Flower was selected as one of the four delegates-atlarge to the National Democratic Convention at St. Louis, which nominated Mr. Cleveland for Presdent, and was chosen chairman of the delegation. In the same year, when it seemed probable that the two Democratic factions in the Twelfth district might each run a candi. date for Congress, they united on Mr. Flower, and asked him to accept the nomination. This he did, with some hesitation, and only in order to help the election of the presidential and guberna. torial nominees.

AGAIN IN CONGRESS.

In the Fifty-first Congress Flower was appointed a member of the house com. mittee on ways and means, and also a a member of the committee on the world's fair. His efforts toward securing the location of the fair in New York have been recognized by the city and State, and his speech on that subject con

tained about all the points in favor of New York that could be put into thirty minutes. In the running debate on this question, when Congressman Springer challenged the validity of the $10,000,000 bonds about to be issued, Mr. Flower, in order to show his earnestness in the matter, said that he would take all the bonds at par, paying the city cash for them.

Mr. Flower once remarked to the writer that his success in Congress was chiefly due to the fact that on whatever committees he was placed he tried to learn as much about his work if not more than any other member of the committee. On the ways and means committee in the Fifty-first Congress, by the questions he asked at the hearing held before that committee, he showed his familiarity with many subjects, and with distant sections of the country and their indus tries. He was an earnest advocate of the Mills bill, and strenuously opposed the McKinley tariff. His intimate knowledge of the subject was particularly shown in his cross-examination of the committee which appeared before the ways and means committee determined to have the duty on oranges and lemons raised three times higher than it was. His cross-examination of the Farmers' Alliance enthusiasts, who appeared in behalf of the scheme for building sub. treasuries throughout the country to make the Federal government a pawn. shop for the loan of money upon crops, created widespread interest.

He did not forget the post-office clerks while in Congress, and favored a bill giving them fifteen days' leave of absence each year, and also offered an amendment for the eight-hour claims bill to include post-office employes. There was no just claim before Congress for the pension of a union soldier that he did not champion, believing that if a soldier received a pension to which he was not entitled the government was to blame and not the soldier, for there are in each Congressional district three surgeons by whom the soldier is examined before he

is allowed a pension. Mr. Flower also made a strong speech in the Fifty-first Congress in favor of the election of postmasters by the people, and offered an amendment to the Constitution to that effect. Because of his thorough knowledge of the west and its needs he was enabled to make in Congress a speech on the irrigation question, which attracted a great deal of attention, and which was made the basis of the Senate committee's report on that subject.

THE CANVASS of 1890.

Mr. Flower was chairman of the Democratic Congressional campaign committee in 1890. The committee had very small means, but his organizing powers were brought into play with great suc

cess.

The campaign was quietly but systematically conducted. Campaign documents were circulated in large numbers, and the result was the largest Democratic Congressional majority ever obtained in an election in the United

States. Mr. Flower created the impression that he was doing nothing, even counseling some of the leading newspapers of his party to pitch into him and accuse him ot inaction, in order to arouse the Democratic rank and file to the necessity for active effort on their part. He believed that a full vote of his party meant a great Democratic triumph, and the outcome justified his belief.

Mr. Flower was nominated for Gov. ernor at the Democratic State Convention of 1892 and was elected by a plurality of 47,937 over Jacob Sloat Fassett, the Republican candidate.

THE STURDY COMMISSIONER COMES IN COL

LISION WITH JAY GOUld. As an instance of Mr. Flower's independence of spirit and fearlessness of action in what he considers to be his duty the following story is apropos: The subway commission of New York had been organized a year when Charles E. Loew, its president, died. Governor Hill offered Mr. Flower the appointment, which he accepted upon the single con

dition that after the work had been well started he should be permitted to resign. Mr. Flower visited the chief cities of the country, including Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, investigating the systems by which the cities were operating underground wires. In his subsequent report he took the ground that the subway did not need the services of any of the 440 patent-right men who were clamoring for the adoption of their several systems of subways; that electric-light, telephone or telegraph wires, if properly insulated and protected, needed only mechanical appliances to keep the water away from them and to avert danger from pick and shovel, and that, therefore, it did not matter whether they were laid in asphalt, wood, or other material so long as they should be protected from the ele. ments and against molestation. The re. port was adopted by the board, and two miles of the subway was built in Sixth avenue under his direction. The fight between the Western Union and Bell

telephone was practically ended, and when the Western Union applied to the board for a subway to run from the Western Union building to the Brooklyn bridge, and said that it was willing to comply with the law, Mr. Flower at once tendered his resignation to the Governor.

Jay Gould came into Mr. Flower's office one day and said: "Mr. Flower, there was a great deal of dispute as to whether or not this law is constitutional or not. My lawyers think it is not; so if you will let your lawyer make out a brief I will have mine do the same, and we will submit the question to Judge Blatchford, get his opinion and have it settled." Mr. Flower answered: "Mr. Gould, your company has been laying cables under the Third avenue elevated railroad without a permit from the board of subway commissioners. I am not so much concerned about the con. stitutionality of this law as I am in fixing the responsibility of the party who ordered them to lay that cable on a

Sunday. If I can find out I shall proceed against him for disobeying the law, and if I find that you ordered it it would give me great pleasure to land you in jail." Mr. Gould then remarked that the Western Union had no money to build subways. Mr. Flower at this expressed his belief that when the Western Union was once underground in the subway with cables, the expense of keeping it in repair in New York city would be about one-fifth of its former cost, and if Mr. Gould's company did not have money he knew that his bankers would jump at the chance of starting a company to manufacture cables and to rent them to the Western Union. Before the conversation ended Mr. Gould requested Mr. Flower to send his lawyer to the Western Union office saying that he had no doubt they could agree upon a form of letter by which he might ask the board of subway commissioners for a permit to hang the cables under the Third avenue elevated. This was afterward done and the form of letter agreed upon.

HOW HE SPENDS HIS MONEY. Mr. Flower has never turned his back on any charitable institution that he could consistently befriend, as the people of the northern portion of the State can testify. He has always made it a rule to give away in charity a certain portion of his income-for many years all that he did not need for his own living expenses-believing that when a man had wealth he should distribute it while he is alive in order that there be no contest over it when he dies.

Mr. Flower's parents were Presbyterians, and on a visit to Theresa a number of years ago he found that the church which he had attended as a small boy had run down and that the building itself was in a dilapidated condition. At considerable expense he had the church rebuilt and it is now a beautiful little structure-a fitting memorial to Mr. Flower's parents. On the death of his son, Henry Keep Flower, in 1881, Mr. and Mrs., Flower gave St. Thomas'

church in New York city, of which Mr. Flower is a vestryman, $50,000 to erect on Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth streets and Second avenue a four-story building, to be known as St. Thomas' house, to be used for parish work. The structure has rooms occupied by an American Sunday school of 500 children, a German Sunday school, and a Chinese Sunday school. On the lower floor is a diet kitchen and on the second floor an insti tution to teach young girls how to sew and mend. The next floor is a club. room, where the boys play checkers and backgammon, and on the upper floor is found a library for a club of young men. All these institutions are carried on by the charitably disposed in St. Thomas' church. On the inside of the building on the wall is a marble slab, upon which is inscribed: "Erected to God by Ros. well P. Flower and Sarah M. Flower, in memory of their son, Henry Keep Flower."

Mr. Flower's brother, Anson, is a vestryman in Trinity church in Water. town, and Mr. Flower joined him in building a $100,000 home for that parish. The homœopathic school of physicians in New York city were erecting, a few years ago, a college, but had no hospital in which to teach young students anat. omy and the use of the knite in practical surgery. Mr. Flower erected for them, at the corner of Avenue A and Sixty. third street, the Flower hospital, which supplies this need. But this by no means completes the list of beneficences of the family. Henry Keep's widow has erected at a cost of $100,000, in the suburbs of Watertown, a home for old men and women called "the Henry Keep Home." As Mr. Flower truly says: "What better use could be made of the money of Henry Keep, whose father died in a poor-house, than to erect, with some of it, a home for aged men and women." Henry Keep's widow has also given $100,000 for the Ophthal. mic hospital at Twenty-third street and Fourth avenue, New York.

THE WATERTOWN RESIDENCE.

Although Mr. Flower has for some twenty years had a winter home in Fifth avenue, New York, he still spends his summers in Watertown, where upon Arsenal street he occupies a cozy, pretty house. There are fifty dwellings in Watertown surpassing it in splendor of appearance, more modern, with a greater evidence of the luxuries of life, but none having more the look of a real home. The house was built over fifty years ago and has the rambling, comfortable look of that period in architect

ure.

It is a wooden building painted white-a cleanly, dazzling white which seems to have been so attractive in the eyes of the last generation- and it has the usual accompaniment of bright green blinds. There is a main building of two stories with a sharp, pitched roof, its facade plain, but with timbers in relief, carved in the colonial style, and a big front door, with a big brass knocker, and an immaculate stoop of somewhat elaborated design. From this main building have branched off wings of one story in height, with an abundance of big, generous windows and wide piazzas. The house stands quite close to the street, but there is a sufficient space between it and the street for some handsome beds of flowers and a perfectly trimmed green lawn, while back of the house one sees a fine garden and clumps of handsome trees. Mr. Flower has gathered in his Watertown library the many valuable documents that he collected while a Congressman. He has, among other things, every mes. sage that has been sent by a President to Congress since Washington's day, and there are very few of them with which he is unfamiliar.

HIS LIFE IN ALBANY,

Since its occupancy by the Governor and Mrs. Flower the Executive Mansion has undergone a complete transforma. tion. Both Cleveland and Hill were bachelor Governors, so that there had been no woman at the head of the establishment since the Cornell administration. Mrs. Flower brought her own pictures, added materially to the other furnishings, and gave to the big house an attractive, homelike air which it has never known until now. The Governor remained at home until office hours, when he went to the Executive Chamber, never, by the way, using the Governor's private staircase, but going up one of the elevators like any ordinary citizen. His business affairs were attended to in New York, where he had able assistance, and they did not take up much of his time in Albany. The callers whom he saw were comparatively very few, as they were carefully sifted before they were admitted to him. whom he did see were men of importance,

Those

who attended to their business

promptly. The office hours were only five, and one of them he took to go to the Executive Mansion for luncheon. Mr. Flower likes good cigars and kept several boxes in the Executive Chamber and at the Executive Mansion; but, like the good business man that he is, he neither smoked himself nor permitted smoking about him during office hours. He considers himself a good judge of wine and usually takes it with his dinner. Besides smoking, he has the Jefferson county habit of chewing, though the habit is not marked and one might know him for some time without noticing it.