To convey the President from General Hooker's camp to the review of
General Reynolds' corps, a ride had to be taken in a six-mule
ambulance. Either not knowing the rank of his passenger, or being a
teamster, which in our army replaces the French sapper for rudeness,
the driver showered as many oaths of the largest caliber--fire and fury
signifying nothing--as snaps of the long cowhide. Lincoln, who had
known the genus in the clay of the West, kept his eye on him while
leaning out of the window. In an interval when the vociferator had to
take breath, he asked quietly:
"Excuse me, my friend, are you an Episcopalian?"
"N-no, Mr. President," stammered the astonished jehu, "I am a
Methodist."
"Well, I thought you must be an Episcopalian, for you swear like
Secretary Seward, a warden of that church."
(Seward was the great man of the Republican party, next to Lincoln only
in some essentials for political success. While a church member, he was
man of the world enough to give a backing to this jest of the
President.)
* * * * *
"MY SPEECHES HAVE ORIGINALITY AS THEIR MERIT."
Instead of believing that Lincoln's extraordinary experiences in the
multifarious West produced a factotum, his revilers asserted that he
looked to one minister for financial instructions, to another for
military guidance, etc. But it is true that by tradition, as the
premier in fact, the secretary of state is supposed to write the first
drafts at least of the presidential speeches to foreign ministers, and,
as the secretary was Seward, a man of letters preeminently, he had
Lincoln's addresses, even to home delegations, fathered upon him.
The President was chatting in his own study when a messenger ran in
with a paper, explaining his haste with the words:
"Compliments of the secretary with the speech your excellency is to
make to the Swiss minister."
Anybody else would have been abashed by the seeming exposure, but the
executive merely cried aloud as if to publish the facts to the auditory:
"Oh, this is a speech Mr. Seward has written for me. I guess I will try
it before these gentlemen, and see how it goes." He read it in the
burlesque manner with which he parodied circuit preachers in his
boyhood and public speakers in his prime, and added at the close:
"There, I like that. It has the merit of originality!"
* * * * *