up whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves. There may be one consideration used in stay of such final judgment, but that is not for us to use in advance. That is, that there exists in our case an instance of a vast and farreaching disturbing element which the history of no other free nation will probably ever present. That, however, is not for us to say at present. Taking the government as we found it, we will see if the majority can preserve it." Thus, his central ideas remained always before him. Two years before he had said to Herndon that the advocates of state sovereignty reminded him of the fellow who contended that the proper place for the big kettle was inside the little one. For the edification of the same friend he filled a sieve with gravel and shook it until only the biggest pebbles were left, to point the moral that upheavals bring the best men to the front. He was now well launched on a commotion big enough to test everybody. Sometimes his heart seemed to quail, and he even said he wished he was back in Springfield, but more often his sad face was calm and resolute, as if he felt able to decide each question as fate put it before him.

Although military matters held the foreground, the President's activity was of many kinds. In response to mere requests for autographs he

signed his name twenty or thirty times a day. His correspondence is studded with notes to the cabinet officers asking for places with which he wished to conciliate various politicians. In the campaign of 1860 he had said to a friend: " They won't give up the offices. Were it believed that vacant places could be had at the North Pole, the road there would be lined with dead Virginians." To another friend he said, referring to Daniel Webster: "I was greatly pleased with a speech which I heard him deliver in which he said, 'Politicians are not sunflowers; they don't turn to their God when he sets the same look which they turned when he rose." When he stood on the verge of war and his office was besieged with office-seekers, he wished he could get time to attend to the Southern question. "I am like a man so busy in letting rooms at one end of his house that he cannot stop to put out the fire that is burning in the other." He is quoted as going even so far as to exclaim: “If our American Society and the United States government are demoralized and overthrown, it will come from the voracious desire for office, this wriggle to live without toil, work, and labor, from which I am not free myself."

However, although he doubtless had moods in which he bitterly resented the politicians, he had said, more than once, "I must run the machine.

as I find it," and he saw that war in the United States was inevitably in large part a game of politics. Seward said that in dealing with officeseekers, Lincoln showed a cunning that amounted to genius. In his relations to the soldiers his motives were more mixed, a very warm and soft heart acting in conjunction, doubtless, with a shrewd knowledge of the value of a reputation for sympathy with the common soldier. When a general once reproached him for pardoning everybody and destroying discipline, a complaint often made during the war, saying: "Why do you interfere? Congress has taken from you all the responsibility," Lincoln replied, "Yes, Congress has taken the responsibility and left the women to howl about me." He used to say it was a fortunate thing he wasn't born a woman. One paper which he sent to James B. Fry, who was in charge of the appointment branch of the adjutant general's office, had on it: "On this day Mrs. called upon me. She is the wife of Major the regular army. She wants her husband made a brigadier general. She is a saucy little woman, and I think she will torment me until I have to do it. A. L." And she did.

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While his kindness and his sense of the value of personal popularity made him yielding, his readiness in repartee frequently got him out of difficult situations. Early in the war a temperance com

mittee came to him to say that the reason we did not win was because our army drank so much whiskey as to bring the curse of the Lord upon it. Lincoln replied that this was rather unfair upon the part of the aforesaid curse, as the other side drank more and worse whiskey than ours. Sometimes, but very seldom, he was sharp-tongued with some obtrusive caller, but never in any way did he have the appearance or manner of superiority. He did what his petitioners wanted him to, or made them think he would if he could, or dexterously turned them off with a story, or convinced them of the impossibility by strong and racy logic.

To a young officer reprimanded for a quarrel with an associate he said, according to Nicolay and Hay: "The advice of a father to his son, ‘Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee!' is good, but not the best. Quarrel not at all. No man, resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting. for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite."

To a delegation of ministers full of advice he said: "Gentlemen, suppose all the property you possess were in gold, and you had placed it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope. With slow, cautious, steady step he walks the rope, bearing your all. Would you shake the cable, and keep shouting to him, Blondin! stand up a little straighter! Blondin! stoop a little more; go a little faster; lean more to the south! Now lean a little more to the north!- would that be your behavior in such an emergency? No; you would hold your breath, every one of you, as well as your tongues. You would keep your hands off until he was safe on the other side. This government, gentlemen, is carrying an immense weight; untold treasures are in its hands. The persons managing the ship of state in this storm are doing the best they Don't worry them with needless warnings and complaints. Keep silence, be patient and we will get you safe across. Good day, gentleI have other duties pressing upon me that must be attended to."

can.

Adroitness in all the daily routine of life went hand in hand with shrewdness in what are usually deemed the higher problems of statesmanship. Under date of May 21, is a despatch to Charles Francis Adams, minister to England, written by Secretary Seward, and corrected by President Lincoln, as shown by the following facsimile: