possible for even our eager and gallant soldiers to keep their noses so high that their feet will not stick in the clay mud of Old Virginia." I have given very nearly the words of Mr. Lincoln. His felicity in stating a case and his good sense always impressed me, and my memory loses nothing in vividness with the lapse of years. The Congress was adjourned for the holiday period quite as early and quite as long as usual, notwithstanding pressing public affairs were requiring the attention of the law-making power. When it reassembled-January 5th, as I remember-the rain had come, the Virginia roads were well-nigh impassable, and the army was still in and around Washington. Verily, to move then was to stick fast in the mud, and the Congress and the country reluctantly became reconciled, in a measure, to the situation. R. E. FENTON. V. J. P. USHER. 'Without doubt the greatest man of rebellion times, the one matchless among forty millions for the peculiar difficulties of the period, was Abraham Lincoln." JAMES LONGStreet. MR. R. LINCOLN'S greatness was founded upon his devotion to truth, his humanity and his innate sense of justice to all. In his career as a lawyer, he traversed a wide range of territory in Illinois; he attended many courts and had many professional engagements, some remunerative and others not. In all his conflicts at the bar, wherein it may be said he was successful in every case that he ought to have been, he never inflicted an unnecessary wound upon an adversary, and no one ever thought of uttering a rude. word to him. He affected no superior wisdom over his fellows, yet he was often appealed to by the judge to say what rule of law ought to be applied in a given case, and what disposition the parties ought to make of it, and his opinion, when expressed, always seemed to be so reasonable, fair and just, that the parties accepted it. He was never known to re |