. Lincoln:_ He will accept it.

_Mr. Stone:_ A very right decision, if I may say so.

_Mrs. Lincoln:_ It is.

_Mr. Cuffney:_ And you, ma'am, have advised him that way, I'll be
bound.

_Mrs. Lincoln:_ You said this was a great evening for me. It is, and
I'll say more than I mostly do, because it is. I'm likely to go into
history now with a great man. For I know better than any how great he
is. I'm plain looking and I've a sharp tongue, and I've a mind that
doesn't always go in his easy, high way. And that's what history will
see, and it will laugh a little, and say, "Poor Abraham Lincoln."
That's all right, but it's not all. I've always known when he should
go forward, and when he should hold back. I've watched, and watched,
and what I've learnt America will profit by. There are women like
that, lots of them. But I'm lucky. My work's going farther than
Illinois--it's going farther than any of us can tell. I made things
easy for him to think and think when we were poor, and now his
thinking has brought him to this. They wanted to make him Governor
of Oregon, and he would have gone and have come to nothing there. I
stopped him. Now they're coming to ask him to be President, and I've
told him to go.

_Mr. Stone_: If you please, ma'am, I should like to apologise for
smoking in here.

_Mrs. Lincoln_: That's no matter, Samuel Stone. Only, don't do it
again.

_Mr. Cuffney_: It's a great place for a man to fill. Do you know how
Seward takes Abraham's nomination by the Republicans?

_Mrs. Lincoln_: Seward is ambitious. He expected the nomination.
Abraham will know how to use him.

_Mr. Stone_: The split among the Democrats makes the election of the
Republican choice a certainty, I suppose?

_Mrs. Lincoln_: Abraham says so.

_Mr. Cuffney_: You know, it's hard to believe. When I think of the
times I've sat in this room of an evening, and seen your husband come
in, ma'am, with his battered hat nigh falling off the back of his
head, and stuffed with papers that won't go into his pockets, and
god-darning some rascal who'd done him about an assignment or a
trespass, I can't think he's going up there into the eyes of the
world.

_Mrs. Lincoln_: I've tried for years to make him buy a new hat.

_Mr. Cuffney_: I have a very large selection just in from New York.
Perhaps Abraham might allow me to offer him one for his departure.

_Mrs. Lincoln_: He might. But he'll wear the old one.

_Mr. Stone_: Slavery and the South.