about other things, and some one came in and said to him that a deputation had just arrived and wanted to see him.

'Well," said he, "you come along with me." I said I did not want to make any remarks, but he said, "Come along."

We went to a balcony window, and Mr. Lincoln made a few courteous remarks, and then he said, "Now Mr. Beecher will talk to you." I do not

remember what I said—a few words.

I do not know that I ever met him after that.

John Dufrees was Public Printer, and was my old friend and chum. He was intimately acquainted with him, and he gave me a good many things which would come more properly from him than me.

When Mrs. Stowe called to see Lincoln towards the close of the war, she says that she spoke of the great relief he must feel at the prospect of an early close of the war and the establishment of peace. And he said, in a sad way, “No, Mrs. Stowe, I shall never live to see peace; this war is killing me;" and he had a presentiment that he would not live long, that he had put his whole life into the war, and that when it was over he would then collapse.

Nobody will ever understand Lincoln who is not acquainted with Western character and habit of thirty or forty years ago.

I have heard of these stories from Stanton. Stan

ton was as tender as a woman-he was as tender as a lover. I had great admiration for him.

I came up Wall Street one day and met a friend who said: "I just came back from Washington. Stanton is breaking down; he won't hold out much longer."

Well, it just struck me all in a heap. I walked into one of those offices in Wall Street and said, "Will you allow me pen and ink?" and wrote to him just what I had heard that he was sick and broken down and desponding. I wrote that he need not despond, that the country was saved, and, if he did not do another thing, he had done enough. I sent the letter, and in the course of a few days I got back a letter, and if it had been a woman writing in answer to a proposal it could not have been more tender. And when I went to Washington he treated me with great tenderness, as if I had been his son.

When Johnson had come to the Presidency, and Stanton and every one was anxious that he should be kept in Northern influence, I went down to Washington to preach the funeral sermon. The President was there, and he asked me to call and see him that he would be happy to see me.

Stanton said, "Go." I afterward went to see the President. I returned to Stanton's and went into his study, and he got a box of cigars, and I thought that if I did not smoke he would not like it, and I

took a smoke, although it made me sick-puffing occasionally-and when he threw away his, I did

mine.

Stanton, evidently, got rest from his great cares through literature; but Lincoln, from the humorists. I understood them both perfectly. Stanton had poetry for his relaxation. Everybody must have somewhere to blow off.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

XIV.

WILLIAM D. KELLEY.

I.

HE object of this series of sketches of Abraham Lincoln by men who were intimately acquainted with him is, as I understand it, to perpetuate the memory of illustrative facts of his current life, and thus provide materials for future biography.

Remembering that it is not for "impressions of his character, but for incidents illustrative thereof," that I have been asked, I find a fitting prelude to my reminiscences in a rapid allusion to our first meeting. It took place in the reception-room and library of Mr. Lincoln's Springfield home on the evening of the day succeeding his nomination for the Presidency by the Republican Convention. It so happened that, though we had never met, I was not entirely unknown to him. He had heard of the sonorous voice of the Pennsylvania delegate, who, favoring the nomination of Lincoln or Wade, and who, having been informed of the details of an arrangement by which the immense audience that would throng the wigwam on the evening preceding the