I

XXIV.

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

SAW Mr. Lincoln a number of times during the canvass for his second election. The characteristic which struck me most was his superabundance of common sense. His power of managing men, of deciding and avoiding difficult questions, surpassed that of any man I ever met. A keen insight of human nature had been cultivated by the trials and struggles of his early life. He knew the people and how to reach them better than any man of his time. I heard him tell a great many stories, many of which would not do exactly for the drawing-room; but for the person he wished to reach, and the object he desired to accomplish with the individual, the story did more than any argument could have done.

He said to me once, in reference to some sharp criticisms which had been made upon his storytelling: "They say I tell a great many stories; I reckon I do, but I have found in the course of a long experience that common people"-and repeating it "common people, take them as they run,

are

more easily influenced and informed through the medium of a broad illustration than in any other way, and as to what the hypercritical few may think, I don't care."

He said: "I have originated but two stories in my life, but I tell tolerably well other people's stories." He said that, "riding the circuit for many years and stopping at country taverns where were gathered the lawyers, jurymen, witnesses and clients, they would sit up all night narrating to each other their life adventures; and that the things which happened to an original people, in a new country, surrounded by novel conditions, and told with the descriptive power and exaggeration which characterized such men, supplied him with an exhaustless fund of anecdote which could be made applicable for enforcing or refuting an argument better than all the invented stories of the world."

Several times when I saw him, he seemed to be oppressed not only with the labors of the position, but especially with care and anxiety growing out of the intense responsibility which he felt for the issue of the conflict and the lives which were lost. He knew the whole situation better than any man in the administration, and virtually carried on in his own mind not only the civic side of the government, but all the campaigns. And I knew when he threw himself (as he did once when I was there) on a