eyes. There is always a latent expression of sadness. We have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial ones.

"Sometimes the President comes and goes in an open barouche. The cavalry always accompany him with drawn sabres. Often I notice he halts at the residence of the Secretary of War and holds conferences there. He does not alight, but sits in the carriage, and Mr. Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes his son, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. Earlier in the summer I occasionally saw the President and his wife, towards the latter part of the afternoon, out in a barouche on a pleasure ride. Mrs. Lincoln was dressed in complete black, with a long crape veil. The equipage is of the plainest kind-only two horses, and they nothing extra. They passed me once very close, and his look, though abstracted, happened to be directed steadily in my eye. He bowed and smiled, but beneath his smile I noticed the sadness. None of the artists or pictures have caught the subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. One of the great portrait-painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.",

Many letters threatening violence had been received by Mr. Lincoln. He usually referred to them jocosely, and often said that the people of Washington might find him some morning decorating a lamp-post or dangling from the limb of a tree. So many had been received that Mr. Stanton, as a matter of precaution, detailed the cavalrymen as an escort. Their riding with drawn sabres was not to repel any apprehended assault, but in accordance with military discipline.

In the quiet and healthful retreat of the Soldier's Home, after the labors of the day, Mr. Lincoln gave himself to recreation. He looked out upon a lovely landscape - hill, dale, meadow, forest, field, the Capitol, the spires of the city, the white headstones of the soldiers' cemetery.

On a calm summer evening Mr. Lincoln sat upon the veranda of the Home, surrounded by friends, and as he beheld the newly-made graves recited with tender pathos the stanzas written by the poet Collins: (*)

"How sleep the brave, who sink to rest

By all the country's wishes blest,
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mold?

She then shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

"By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;

Then Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,

To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair

To dwell a weeping hermit there!"

The grounds of the Home were adorned with a great variety of trees and shrubs. A lady plucked a fragrant evergreen. She thought it a species of cedar. Another declared it spruce. A third thought it a variety of pine.

"I know a little about trees," said the President. "I lived in the woods once. This is neither cedar, spruce, nor pine, but a sort of illegitimate cypress. Trees are as deceptive as certain classes of men, among whom none but the eye of a physiognomist can detect dissimilar moral features until events have developed them. Do you know I think we ought to have a school of events?"

"A school of events, Mr. President!" exclaimed one of the ladies. "Yes," he continued; "for it is only by active development that character or ability can be tested. Understand me. I mean men, not trees. The latter can be tested, and an analysis of their strength obtained at less expense to life and human interests than any estimate of the strength and value of men. Call it a whimsey, if you will. I mean that students, before entering public life, might pass through mimic vicissitudes to bring out their strength and calibre. You might ascertain who was fitted to be a soldier or a martyr or a cunning politician. These things have to be ascertained later in life. There is no more dangerous or expensive analysis than that which consists in trying a

man."

"Do you think, Mr. President, that all men are tried?"

"Scarcely; for if they were, so many would not fit their places so badly. Our friend Henry Ward Beecher explains this in his quaint illustrations of men who are out of their proper sphere. He meets clerical faces in gay, rollicking life, and finds natural wits wearing ascetic robes."

"Some men, Mr. President, seem to be able to do anything," said the lady.

"Versatility," Mr. Lincoln replied, "is an injurious possession, since it never can be greatness. It misleads you in your calculations, and it inevitably disappoints you in any great trust, from its want of depth. A versatile man, to be safe, should never soar. Mediocrity is sure of detection."

We have seen Mr. Lincoln turning for recreation to the humor of

"Artemas Ward," but he read with greater zest the letters of "Reverend Petroleum V. Nasby," written by David R. Locke, editor of the "Toledo Blade." Mr. Locke saw, in 1861, the false position assumed by the Democratic Party by its sympathy with the Confederacy, its readiness to defend slavery, its hatred of the negro, and its opposition to the war. He also comprehended that irony, sarcasm, and ridicule might be made far more effective than logical argument in an exposure of the attitude of that party.

There was irony in the title "Reverend." It was expressive of the position assumed by the Southern churches in their defence of slavery. "Reverend Mr. Nasby," at the outbreak of the war, represented himself as a citizen of Kentucky (a neutral State), residing at "Confederate Cross Roads;" but when the people of that section declared for the Union, he moved into southern Ohio, and took up his residence among the Peace Democrats, who had established a church, the members of which were wholly of that political faith. "Reverend Mr. Nasby" was not a member of a Total Abstinence Society, but drank whiskey quite freely. He not only kept a private demijohn, but never declined to drink when invited by any of his parishioners, who often met at Bascom's grocery to discuss public affairs and denounce President Lincoln. They were very bitter in their denunciation of the Emancipation Proclamation, the call for troops, and the enlistment of negroes. When President Lincoln issued a proclamation for drafting soldiers, "Reverend Mr. Nasby" fled to Windsor, Canada. He found many negroes there, who had escaped from slavery before the war; also many white mencitizens of Ohio and Indiana who, like himself, had accepted voluntary exile to escape the draft. "Mr. Nasby" thus described the situation of himself and fellow-exiles :(")

"200 Peece men are here, and I must acknowledge that we are not treeted with that distinguished consideration usually accorded political eggsiles. Fer instance, at the tavern where I board the parler is partikelerly plesent, and I wus a settin into it. In trips a