tly.

"I give you fair warning, Mr. President," said Stanton. "If you've come
here to read me the work of one of your tom-fool funny men, I'll fling
it out of the window."

"This work is the Bible," said Lincoln, with the artlessness of a
mischievous child. "I looked in to ask how the draft was progressing."

"It starts in Rhode Island on July 7, and till it starts I can say
nothing. We've had warning that there will be fierce opposition in New
York. It may mean that we have a second civil war on our hands. And of
one thing I am certain--it will cost you your re-election."

The President did not seem perturbed. "In this war we've got to take
one step at a time," he said. "Our job is to save the country, and to do
that we've got to win battles. But you can't win battles without armies,
and if men won't enlist of their own will they've got to be compelled.
What use is a second term to me if I have no country.... You're not
weakening on the policy of the draft, Mr. Stanton?"

The War Minister shrugged his shoulders. "No. In March it seemed
inevitable. I still think it is essential, but I am forced to admit the
possibility that it may be a rank failure. It is the boldest step you
have taken, Mr. President. Have you ever regretted it?"

Lincoln shook his head. "It don't do to start regretting. This war is
managed by the Almighty, and if it's his purpose that we should win
He will show us how. I regard our fallible reasoning and desperate
conclusions as part of His way of achieving His purpose. But about that
draft. I'll answer you in the words of a young Quaker woman who against
the rules had married a military man. The elders asked her if she was
sorry, and she replied that she couldn't truly say that she was sorry,
but that she could say she wouldn't do it again. I was for the draft,
and I was for the war, to prevent democracy making itself foolish."

"You'll never succeed in that," said Stanton gravely.

"If Congress is democracy, there can't be a more foolish gathering
outside a monkey-house."

The President grinned broadly. He was humming the air of a nigger song,
"The Blue-tailed Fly," which Lamon had taught him.

"That reminds me of Artemus Ward. He observes that at the last election
he voted for Henry Clay. It's true, he says, that Henry was dead, but
Since all the politicians that he knew were fifteenth-rate he preferred
to vote for a first-class corpse."

Stanton moved impatiently. He hated the Presiden