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'Scarcely,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'or so many would not fit their place so badly. Your friend, Mr. Beecher, being an eloquent man, explains this well in his quaint illustration of people out of their sphere, the clerical faces he has met with in gay, rollicking life, and the natural wits and good brains that have by a freak dropped into ascetic robes.'

-

"Some men seem able to do what they wish in any position, being equal to them all,' said

some one.

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'Versatility,' replied the President, ‘is an injurious possession, since it never can be greatness. It misleads you in your calculations from its very agreeability, and it inevitably disappoints you in any great trust from its want of depth. A versatile man, to be safe from execration, should never soar; mediocrity is sure of detection.'

On Shakspeare.

Presently the conversation turned upon Shakspeare, of whom it is well known Mr. Lincoln was very fond. He once remarked, "It matters not to me whether Shakspeare be well or ill acted; with him the thought suffices." Edwin Booth was playing an engagement at this time. at Grover's Theatre. He had been announced for the coming evening in his famous part of Hamlet. The President had never witnessed his representation of this character, and he proposed being present. The mention of this play, which I afterward learned had at all times a peculiar charm for Mr. Lincoln's mind, waked up a train of thought I was not prepared for.

Said he, and his words have often returned to me with a sad interest since his own assassination,-"There is one passage of the play of 'Hamlet' which is very apt to be slurred over by the actor, or omitted altogether, which seems to me the choicest part of the play. It is the soliloquy of the king, after the murder. It always struck me as one of the finest touches of nature in the world."

Then, throwing himself into the very spirit of the scene, he took up the words:

"O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't."

He repeated this entire passage from memory, with a feeling and appreciation unsurpassed by anything I ever witnessed upon the stage. Remaining in thought for a few moments, he continued:

"The opening of the play of 'King Richard the Third' seems to me often entirely misapprehended. It is quite common for an actor to come upon the stage, and, in a sophomoric style, to begin with a flourish :

"Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York,
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried!'

Now," said he, "this is all wrong. Richard, you remember, had been, and was then, plotting the destruction of his brothers, to make room for himself. Outwardly, the most loyal to the newly crowned king, secretly he could scarcely contain his impatience at the obstacles still in the way of his own elevation. He appears upon the stage,

just after the crowning of Edward, burning with repressed hate and jealousy. The prologue is the utterance of the most intense bitterness and satire."

Then, unconsciously assuming the character, Mr. Lincoln repeated, also from memory, Richard's soliloquy, rendering it with a degree of force and power that made it seem like a new creation to me. Though familiar with the passage from boyhood, I can truly say that never till that moment had I fully appreciated its spirit. I could not refrain from laying down my palette and brushes, and applauding heartily, upon his conclusion, saying, at the same time, half in earnest, that I was not sure but that he had made a mistake in the choice of a profession, considerably, as may be imagined, to his amusement. Mr. Sinclair has since repeatedly said to me that he never heard these choice passages of Shakspeare rendered with more effect by the most famous of modern actors.

Lincoln's Purity of Heart.

Mr. Lincoln, I am convinced, has been greatly wronged in this respect [enjoyment of salacious stories]. Every foul-mouthed man in the country gave currency to the slime and filth of his own imagination by attributing it to the President. It is but simple justice to his memory that I should state, that during the entire period of my stay in Washington, after witnessing his intercourse with nearly all classes of men, embracing governors, senators, members of Congress, officers of the army, and intimate friends, I cannot recollect to have heard him relate a

circumstance to any one of them, which would have been out of place uttered in a ladies' drawing-room. And this testimony is not unsupported by that of others, well entitled to consideration. Dr. Stone, his family physician, came in one day to see my studies. Sitting in front of that of the President,-with whom he did not sympathize politically,-he remarked, with much feeling, "It is the province of a physician to probe deeply the interior lives of men; and I affirm that Mr. Lincoln is the purest hearted man with whom I ever came in contact." Secretary Seward, who of the Cabinet officers was probably most intimate with the President, expressed the same sentiment in still stronger language. He once said to the Rev. Dr. Bellows: "Mr. Lincoln is the best man I ever knew!"

Lincoln's Tenderness of Heart.

Referring to Mr. Lincoln's never-failing fund of anecdote, Judge Bates, Attorney-General, remarked, "The character of the President's mind is such that his thought habitually takes on this form of illustration, by which the point he wishes to enforce is invariably brought home with a strength and clearness impossible in hours of abstract argument. Mr. Lincoln," he added, "comes very near being a perfect man, according to my ideal of manhood. He lacks but one thing.' Looking up from my palette, I asked, musingly, if this was official dignity as President. "No," replied Judge Bates, "that is of little consequence. His deficiency is in the element of will. I have sometimes told him, for instance, that he was unfit to be intrusted with the pardoning power.

Why, if a man comes to him with a touching story, his judgment is almost certain to be affected by it. Should the applicant be a woman, a wife, a mother, or a sister,-in nine cases out of ten, her tears, if nothing else, are sure to prevail."

Lincoln the Pardoner.

The opinion of the Attorney-General, Judge Bates, as to the safety of Mr. Lincoln's being intrusted with the pardoning power, was founded upon an intimate knowledge of the man. A nature of such tenderness and humanity would have been in danger of erring on what many would call the weak side, had it not been balanced by an unusual degree of strong practical good sense and judgment.

The Secretary of War, and generals in command, were frequently much annoyed at being overruled, the discipline and efficiency of the service being thereby, as they considered, greatly endangered. But there was no going back of the simple signature, "A. Lincoln," attached to proclamation or reprieve.

The Hon. Mr. Kellogg, representative from Essex County, New York, received a despatch one evening from the army, to the effect that a young townsman, who had been induced to enlist through his instrumentality, had, for a serious misdemeanor, been convicted by a court-martial, and was to be shot the next day. Greatly agitated, Mr. Kellogg went to the Secretary of War, and urged, in the strongest manner, a reprieve. Stanton was inexorable. "Too many cases of the kind had been let off," he said; "and it was time