ing in America, if not in the world. He possessed
originality and power of thought in an eminent degree. He was
cautious, cool, concentrated, with continuity of reflection; was
patient and enduring. These are some of the grounds of his wonderful
success.

Not only was nature, man, fact and principle suggestive to Mr.
Lincoln, not only had he accurate and exact perceptions, but he was
causative, i. e., his mind ran back behind all facts, things and
principles to their origin, history and first cause, to that point
where forces act at once as effect and cause. He would stop and stand
in the street and analyze a machine. He would whittle things to a
point, and then count the numberless inclined planes, and their pitch,
making the point. Mastering and defining this, he would then cut that
point back, and get a broad transverse section of his pine stick, and
peel and define that. Clocks, omnibuses and language, paddle-wheels
and idioms, never escaped his observation and analysis. Before he
could form any idea of anything, before he would express his opinion
on any subject, he must know it in origin and history, in substance
and quality, in magnitude and gravity. He must know his subject inside
and outside, upside and down side. He searched his own mind and nature
thoroughly, as I have often heard him say. He must analyze a
sensation, an idea, and words, and run them back to their origin,
history, purpose and destiny. He was most emphatically a remorseless
analyzer of facts, things and principles. When all these processes had
been well and thoroughly gone through, he could form an opinion and
express it, but no sooner. He had no faith. "Say so's" he had no
respect for, coming though they might from tradition, power or
authority.

All things, facts and principles had to run through his crucible and
be tested by the fires of his analytic mind; and hence, when he did
speak, his utterances rang out gold-like, quick, keen and current upon
the counters of the understanding. He reasoned logically, through
analogy and comparison. All opponents dreaded him in his originality
of idea, condensation, definition and force of expression, and woe be
to the man who hugged to his bosom a secret error if Mr. Lincoln got
on the chase of it. I say, woe to him! Time could hide the error in no
nook or corner of space in which he would not detect and expose it.

[Transcriber's Note: Part of this was omitted in original.]

The great predominati