e that they
were plotting against their Deliverer.

He "always had much _dry_ wit about him that kept _oozing_ out"!

We have given a bird's-eye view of the main incidents of his boyhood,
for we cannot quite agree with our author in thinking that his "old
grammar laid the foundation, in part, of Abraham's future character,"
seeing we have previously been told that he had "become the most
important man in the place," and we have the same writer's authority for
believing that "the habits of life are usually fixed by the time a lad
is fifteen years of age." Nor can we admit that his grammar even "taught
him the rudiments of his native language," when we have been having
proof upon proof, for two hundred and eighty-six pages, that he was
already familiar with its rudiments. We are equally skeptical as to
whether it really "opened the golden gate of knowledge" for him: we
should certainty say that this gate had stood ajar, at least, for years.
Indeed, that portion of his history which relates to grammar seems to us
by far the most unsatisfactory of all. In his honesty, in his
penmanship, in his kindness of heart, in his wit, dry or damp, we feel a
confidence which not even the shock of political campaigns has been able
to move. But in respect of grammar we find ourselves in a state of the
most painful uncertainty. We have never regarded it as our beloved
President's strong point, but we have considered any linguistic defect
more than atoned for by the hearty, timely, sturdy, plain sense which
appeals so directly and forcibly to the good sense of others. This book
calls up a distressing doubt, and a doubt that strikes at vital
interests. "Grammar," our President is reported to have said before he
had cast the integuments of a grocer's clerk, "Grammar is the art of
speaking and writing the English language with propriety"! Is this a
definition, we sorrowfully ask, becoming an American citizen? It has,
indeed, in many respects the qualities of a perfect definition. It is
deep; it is accurate; it is exhaustive; but it is _not_ loyal. Coming
from the lips of a subject of Great Britain, it would not surprise us.
An Englishman undoubtedly believes that grammar is the art of speaking
and writing the English language with propriety. All the grammatical
research that preceded the establishment of his mother-tongue was but
the collection of fuel to feed the flame of its glory; all that follows
will be to diffuse the light of that flam