they think, that government does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread in the sweat of other men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven."

*

The famous "peace" conference, on board the River Queen, in Hampton Roads, between President Lincoln and Secretary Seward, and the rebel commissioners, Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, took place the 3d of February, 1865.

Mr. Davis had on this occasion, as on that of Mr. Stephens' visit to Washington, made it a condition that no conference should be had unless his rank as commander or president should first be recognized. Mr. Lincoln declared that the only ground on which he could rest the justice of the war-either with his own people or with foreign powers—was that it was not a war for conquest, for that the States had never been separated from the Union. Consequently, he could not recognize another government inside of the one of which he alone was President, nor admit the separate independence of States that were yet a part of the Union. "That," said he, "would be doing what you have so long asked Europe to do in vain, and be resigning the only thing the armies of the Union are fighting for."

Mr. Hunter made a long reply to this, insisting that the recognition of Davis' power to make a treaty was

the first and indispensable step to peace, and referred to the correspondence between King Charles I. and his Parliament, as a trustworthy precedent of a constitutional ruler treating with rebels.

Mr. Lincoln's face then wore that indescribable expression which generally preceded his hardest hits, and he remarked: "Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, and I don't pretend to be bright. My only distinct recollection of the matter is, that Charles lost his head."

*

Mr. Lincoln's wit was never malicious nor rudely personal. Once when Mr. Douglas had attempted to parry an argument by impeaching the veracity of a senator whom Mr. Lincoln had quoted, he answered* that the question was not one of veracity, but simply one of argument. "By a course of reasoning, Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar?"

The following is related by a newspaper correspondent of "a couple of aged, plain country poopla, poorly clad, but with frank open countenances," who had called to see the President:

"Now is your time, dear," said the husband, as the *Speech at Charleston, September 18, 1858.

President dismissed the one preceding them.

The

lady stepped forward, made a low courtesy, and said: "Mr. President."

Mr. Lincoln, looking over his spectacles, fixed those gray, piercing, yet mild, eyes upon her, then lifting his head and extending his hand, he said, in the kindest tones:

"Well, good lady, what can I do for you?"

"Mr. President," she resumed, "I feel so embarrassed I can hardly speak. I never spoke to a President before; but I am a good Union woman down in Maryland, and my son is wounded badly, and in the hospital, and I have been trying to get him out, but somehow couldn't, and they said I had better come right to you. When the war first broke out I gave my son first to God, and then told him he might go fight the rebels; and now if you will let me take him home I will nurse him up, and just as soon as he gets well enough he shall go right back and help put down the rebellion. He is a good boy, and don't want to shirk the service."

I was looking full in Mr. Lincoln's face. I saw the tears gathering in his eyes, and his lips quivered as he replied:

"Yes, yes, God bless you! you shall have your son. What hospital did you say?" It seemed a relief to him to turn aside and write a few words, which he handed to the woman, saying: "There, give that to

; and you will get your son, if he is able to go home with you."

In the July following Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, an extra session of Congress was called. In the message then sent in, speaking of secession, and the measures taken by the Southern leaders to bring it about, there occurs the following sentence: "With rebellion thus sugar-coated, they have been drugging the public mind of their section for more than thirty years; until, at length, they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government,” etc. Mr. Defrees, the government printer, told me that, when the message was being printed, he was a good deal disturbed by the use of the term "sugar-coated," and finally went to the President about it. relations to each other being of the most intimate character, he told Mr. Lincoln frankly that he ought to remember that a message to Congress was a different affair from a speech at a mass-meeting in Illinois; that the messages became a part of history, and should be written accordingly.

Their

"What is the matter now?" inquired the President. "Why," said Mr. Defrees, "you have used an undignified expression in the message;" and then, reading the paragraph aloud, he added, "I would alter the structure of that, if I were you."

"Defrees," replied Mr. Lincoln, "that word expresses precisely my idea, and I am not going to change it. The time will never come in this country when the people won't know exactly what 'sugarcoated' means!"

"Upon entering the President's office one afternoon," says a Washington correspondent, “I found Mr. Lincoln busily counting greenbacks. 'This, sir,' said he, 'is something out of my usual line; but a President of the United States has a multiplicity of duties not specified in the Constitution or acts of Congress. This is one of them. This money belongs to a poor negro who is a porter in the Treasury Department, at present very bad with the small-pox. He is now in hospital, and could not draw his pay because he could not sign his name. I have been at considerable trouble to overcome the difficulty and get it for him, and have at length succeeded in cutting red tape, as you newspaper men say. I am now dividing the money and putting by a portion labeled, in an envelope, with my own hands, according to his wish;' and he proceeded to endorse the package very carefully." No one witnessing the transaction could fail to appreciate the goodness of heart which prompted the President of the United States to turn aside for a time from his weighty cares to succor one of the humblest of his fellow-creatures in sickness and sorrow.