ill-fitting boots, gloves too long for the long bony fingers, and a fluffy hat, covered to the top with dusty, puffy crape; and then add to all this an air of strength, physical as well as moral, and a strange look of dignity coupled with all this grotesqueness, and you will have the impression left upon me by Abraham Lincoln. You would never say he was a gentleman: you would still less say he was not one. There are some women about whom no one ever thinks in connexion with beauty, one way or the other-and there are men to whom the epithet of "gentlemanlike" or "ungentlemanlike" appears utterly incongruous, and of such the President is one. Still there is about him a complete absence of pretension, and an evident desire to be courteous to everybody, which is the essence, if not the outward form, of high-breeding. There is a softness, too, about his smile, and a sparkle of dry humour about his eye which redeem the expression of his face, and remind me more of the late Dr. Arnold, as a child's recollection recalls him to me, than any other face I can call to memory.

On the occasion when I had the honour of passing some hours in company with the President, the gathering was a very small one, and consisted of persons with all of whom, except myself, he was personally acquainted. I have no doubt, therefore, that he was as much at his ease as usual, and yet the prevailing impression left upon my mind was that he felt uncomfortable. There was a

look of depression about his face, which, I am told by those who see him daily, was habitual to him, even before the then recent death of his child, whose loss he felt acutely. You cannot look upon his worn, bilious, anxious countenance, and believe it to be that of a happy man. In private life, his disposition, unless report and physiognomy both err, is a sombre one; but, coupled with this, he has a rich fund of dry, Yankee humour, not inconsistent, as in the case of the nation itself, with a sort of habitual melancholy.

It was strange to me to witness the terms of perfect equality on which he appeared to be with everybody. Occasionally some of his interlocutors called him "Mr. President," but the habit was to address him simply as "Sir." There was nothing in his own manner, or in that of his guests, to have shown a stranger that the President of the United States was one of the company. He spoke but little, and seemed to prefer others talking to him to talking himself. But when he did speak, his remarks were always shrewd and sensible. The conversation, like that of all American official men I have ever met with, was unrestrained in the presence of strangers to a degree perfectly astonishing. It is a regard for English, rather than for American rules of etiquette, which induces me to abstain from reporting the conversation that I overheard. Every American public man, indeed, appears not only to live in a glasshouse, but in a reverberating gallery, and to be abso

lutely indifferent as to who sees or hears him. This much I may fairly say, that the President asked me several questions about the state of public feeling in England, and obviously, like almost all Americans, was unable to comprehend the causes which have alienated the sympathies of the mother-country. At the same

time, it struck me that the tone in which he spoke of England was, for an American, unusually fair and candid. There are, perhaps, one or two Lincolniana which I may fairly quote, and which will show the style of his conversation. Some of the party began smoking, and Mr. Seward, who was present, remarked laughingly, "I have "always wondered how any man could ever get to be "President of the United States with so few vices. The "President, you know, I regret to say, neither drinks 66 nor smokes." "That," answered the President, "is a "doubtful compliment. I recollect once being outside

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a stage in Illinois, and a man sitting by me offered me a cigar. I told him I had no vices. He said nothing, smoked for some time, and then grunted out, "It's my experience in life that folks who have got no "vices have plaguey few virtues.'

This reminds me, by the way, of the almost incredible manner in which stories are coined about Mr. Lincoln. Some time afterwards, in the West, I travelled with a gentleman, who professed to be an intimate personal acquaintance of the President. After telling me a number of anecdotes to illustrate his reputed free and

easy manner, he told me that he had once been present in a Western law court, where Mr. Lincoln was engaged to defend a prisoner for murder. He came late, apologized to the judge for his detention, owing to his having over-slept himself, and then stated that he was never comfortable until he had smoked his morning cigar, and proposed, with the judge's permission, that they should have cigars all around. The permission being granted, he proceeded, with his cigar in his mouth, to defend his client. Now, unless I had had personal reason for knowing that Mr. Lincoln was not a smoker, I should certainly have recorded this with a variety of other similar anecdotes, as gospel truth, coming as they did on such apparently indubitable evidence. From all that I saw and heard myself, I have no doubt that Mr. Lincoln would say hosts of things which seem to us utterly undignified, but he is the last man to say anything which would seem undignified to himself. Unlike most Western politicians, he was noted for not being "hail fellow well met" with every bar-room lounger that he came across. He is a humourist, not a buffoon.

But to return to our interview. A gentleman present happened to tell how a friend of his had been expelled from New Orleans as a Unionist, and how, on his expulsion, when he asked to see the writ by which he was expelled, the deputation, which brought him the notice to quit, told him that the Confederate Government had made up their minds to do nothing unconstitutional,

and so they had issued no illegal writ, but simply meant to make him go of his own free will. "Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "that reminds me of an hotel-keeper down at "St. Louis, in the cholera time, who boasted that he "had never had a death in his hotel.

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And no more he had, for, whenever a guest was dying in his house, he "carried him out in his bed and put him in the street to die." At another time, the conversation turned upon the discussions as to the Missouri Compromise, and elicited the following quaint remark from the President:"It used to amuse me some (sic) to find that "the slaveholders wanted more territory because they "had not room enough for their slaves, and yet they complained of not having the slave-trade because they "wanted more slaves for their room."

While I am talking of these Lincoln anecdotes, which used to fill the columns of the American newspapers, let me mention a few which I have reason to believe authentic. Shortly after Mr. Cameron's resignation, an old acquaintance called upon the President, and, after American fashion, asked him point-blank why, when he turned out the Secretary of War, he did not get rid of the whole Cabinet. "Well, you know," was the answer, "there was a farmer, far West, whose fields "were infested with skunks, so he set a trap and "caught nine; he killed the first, but that made such an infernal stench that he thought he had better let "the rest go." Again, at the first council of war,

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