"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!"