Excerpt from Diplomatic Memoirs, Vol. 1 of 2 After canvassing the matter fully with my wife, we decided that, with our young family, a brief residence in Europe would be both pleasant and useful; and I informed the Senator that if it could be had I should be gratified to receive the appointment of Minister to Switzerland, which was in the lowest grade of our diplomatic service. It will thus be seen that thirty years and more ago the diplomatic service presented the same allurement to inexperienced but ambitious young men as it seems to possess at the present day. Upon learning my choice, the Senator approved of it and assured me that I might count on receiving the appointment soon after the re-inauguration of the President, and that I might shape my business arrangements accordingly. But during the course of the ensuing winter I received a tele gram from Senator Morton asking me to come to Washing ton. Upon my arrival at the capital I was informed by him that he had encountered some difficulty in securing the Swiss Mission for me; that the President had promised the friends of the incumbent that he might continue in the office during the coming term but that he had offered to appoint me to the Mexican Mission. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.