of a certain
selfconscious authority. But to-night its possessor seemed ill at ease.
His cheeks were flushed and his eye distracted.

The other had drawn his chair to the fire, so that one side of him was
lit by the late spring sun and one by the glow from the hearth. That
figure we first saw in the Springfield store had altered little in the
eighteen years. There was no grey in the coarse black hair, but the
lines in the sallow face were deeper, and there were dark rings under
the hollow eyes. The old suit of blue jeans had gone; and he wore now
a frock-coat, obviously new, which was a little too full for his gaunt
frame. His tie, as of old, was like a boot-lace. A new silk hat, with
the nap badly ruffled, stood near on the top of a cabinet.

He smiled rather wearily. "We're pretty near through the appointments
now, Mr. Secretary. It's a mean business, but I'm a minority President
and I've got to move in zig-zags so long as I don't get off the pike.
I reckon that honest statesmanship is just the employment of individual
meannesses for the public good. Mr. Sumner wouldn't agree. He calls
himself the slave of principles and says he owns no other master. Mr.
Sumner's my notion of a bishop."

The other did not seem to be listening. "Are you still set on
re-enforcing Fort Sumter?" he asked, his bent brows making a straight
line above his eyes.

Lincoln nodded. He was searching in the inside pocket of his frock-coat,
from which he extracted a bundle of papers. Seward saw what he was
after, and his self-consciousness increased.

"You have read my letter?" he asked.

"I have," said Lincoln, fixing a pair of cheap spectacles on his nose.
He had paid thirty-seven cents for them in Bloomington five years
before. "A mighty fine letter. Full of horse sense."

"You agree with it?" asked the other eagerly.

"Why, no. I don't agree with it, but I admire it a lot and I admire its
writer."

"Mr. President," said Seward solemnly, "on one point I am adamant. We
cannot suffer the dispute to be about slavery. If we fight on that issue
we shall have the Border States against us."

"I'm thinking all the time about the Border States. We've got to keep
them. If there's going to be trouble I'd like to have the Almighty on my
side, but I must have Kentucky."

"And yet you will go forward about Sumter, which is regarded by everyone
as a slavery issue."

"The issue is as God has made it. You can't go past the bed-rock facts.
I am t