The Nation, with its own peculiar irony, speaking of Butler's letter of acceptance, says: "One great source of anxiety to the Bostonians will be removed by this letter. One of their chief reasons for dreading Butler's election was the scandal they thought would be caused by the spectacle of his going out to Harvard College on commencement day to receive his LL. D., followed by a roaring mob of vicious and illiterate followers. Many old Bostonians have felt as if this scene, if they ever beheld it, would kill them. They will now feel easier, for they see that, if elected, his appearance at the old university will be simply the triumph of a cultured conscience over the temptations and trials of American life and of the application to public affairs by an elderly lawyer and soldier of the loftiest principles of private morality. If he has a large following of 'the boys,' too, it will certainly be a hushed and deeply-moved crowd, for these rude natures are not insensible to the influence of openly-avowed spiritual regeneration."