r appreciative. The people did not
at first understand him. In the glamour of the Presidential canvass
they had idealized him,--attributing to him some traits above and
many below his essential qualities. After his election and before
his inauguration there was a general disposition to depreciate him.
He became associated in the popular mind with an impending calamity,
and tens of thousands who had voted for him, heartily repented the
act and inwardly execrated the day that committed the destinies of
the Union to his keeping. The first strong test brought upon Mr.
Lincoln was this depressing re-action among so many of his supporters.
A man with less resolute purpose would have been cast down by it,
but Mr. Lincoln preserved the _mens aequa in arduis_. Through the
gloom of the weeks preceding his inauguration he held his even way.
Perhaps in the more terrible crises through which he was afterwards
called to pass, a firmer nerve was required, but not so rare a
combination of qualities as he had shown in the dismal months with
which the year 1861 opened.

Mr. Lincoln united firmness and gentleness in a singular degree.
He rarely spoke a harsh word. Ready to hear argument and always
open to conviction, he adhered tenaciously to the conclusions which
he had finally reached. Altogether modest, he had confidence in
himself, trusted to the reasoning of his own mind, believed in the
correctness of his own judgment. Many of the popular conceptions
concerning him are erroneous. No man was farther than he from the
easy, familiar, jocose character in which he is often painted.
While he paid little attention to form or ceremony he was not a
men with whom liberties could be taken. There was but one person
in Illinois outside of his own household who ventured to address
him by his first name. There was no one in Washington who ever
attempted it. Appreciating wit and humor, he relished a good story,
especially if it illustrated a truth or strengthened an argument,
and he had a vast fund of illustrative anecdote which he used with
the happiest effect. But the long list of vulgar, salacious stories
attributed to him, were retailed only by those who never enjoyed
the privilege of exchanging a word with him. His life was altogether
a serious one--inspired by the noblest spirit, devoted to the
highest aims. Humor was but an incident with him, a partial relief
to the melancholy which tinged all his years.

He presented an ex