"Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him farther."
After "treason" had "done his worst," the friends who heard him on that occasion remembered that he read that passage very slowly over twice, and with an absorbed and peculiar manner. Did he feel a mysterious presentiment of his approaching fate?
His conversation was original, suggestive, instructive, and playful; and, by its genial humor, fascinating and attractive beyond comparison. Mirthfulness and sadness were strongly combined in him. His mirth was exuberant, it sparkled in jest, story, and anecdote; and the next moment those peculiarly sad, pathetic, melancholy eyes, showed a man "familiar with sorrow, and acquainted with grief." I have listened for hours at his table, and elsewhere, when he has been surrounded by statesmen, military leaders, and other distinguished men of the nation, and I but repeat the universally concurring verdict of all, in stating that as a conversationalist he had no equal. One might meet in company with him the most distinguished men, of various pursuits and professions, but after listening for two or three hours, on separating, it was what Lincoln had said that would be remembered. His were the ideas and illustrations that would not be forgotten. Men often called upon him for the pleasure of listening to him. I have heard the reply to an invitation to attend the theater, "No, I am going up to the White House. I would rather hear Lincoln talk for half an hour, than attend the best theater in the world."
As a public speaker, without any attempt at oratorical display, I think he was the most effective of any man of his day. When he spoke, everybody listened. It was always obvious, before he completed two sentences, that he had something to say, and it was sure to be something original, something different from any thing heard from others, or which had been read in books. He impressed the hearer at once, as an earnest, sincere man, who believed what he said. To-day, there are more of the sayings of Lincoln repeated by the people, more quotations, sentences, and extracts from his writings and speeches, familiar as "household words," than from those of any other American.
I know no book, except the Bible and Shakespeare, from which so many familiar phrases and expressions have been taken as from his writings and speeches. Somebody has said, "I care not who makes the laws, if I may write the ballads of a nation." The words of Lincoln have done more in the last six years to mold and fashion the American character than those of any other man, and their influence has been all for truth, right, justice, and liberty. Great as has been Lincoln's services to the people, as their President, his influence, derived from his words and his example, in molding the future national character, in favor of justice, right, liberty, truth, and real, sincere, unostentatious reverence for God, is scarcely less important. The Republic of the future, the matured national character, will be more influenced by him than by any other man. This is evidence of his greatness, intellectual, and still more, moral. In this power of impressing himself upon the people, he contrasts with many other distinguished men in our history. Few quotations from Jefferson, or Adams, or Webster, live in the every-day language of the people. Little of Clay survives; not much of Calhoun, and who can quote, off-hand, half a dozen sentences from Douglas? But you hear Lincoln's words, not only in every cabin and caucus, and in every stump speech, but at every school-house, high-school, and college declamation, and by every farmer and artisan, as he tells you story after story of Lincoln's, and all to the point, hitting the nail on the head every time, and driving home the argument. Mr. Lincoln was not a scholar, but where is there a speech more exhaustive in argument than his Cooper Institute address? Where any thing more full of pathos than his farewell to his neighbors at Springfield, when he bade them good-bye, on starting for the capital? Where any thing more eloquent than his appeal for peace and union, in his first Inaugural, or than his defense of the Declaration of Independence in the Douglas debates? Where the equal of his speech at Gettysburg? Where a more conclusive argument than in his letter to the Albany Meeting on Arrests? What is better than his letter to the Illinois State Convention; and that to Hodges of Kentucky, in explanation of his anti-slavery policy? Where is there any thing equal in simple grandeur of thought and sentiment, to his last Inaugural? From all of these, and many others, from his every-day talks, are extracts on the tongues of the people, as familiar, and nearly as much reverenced, as texts from the Bible; and these are shaping the national character. "Though dead, he yet speaketh."
As a public speaker, if excellence is measured by results, he had no superior. His manner was generally earnest, often playful; sometimes, but this was rare, he was vehement and impassioned. There have been a few instances, at the bar and on the stump, when, wrought up to indignation by some great personal wrong, or by an aggravated case of fraud or injustice, or when speaking of the fearful wrongs and injustice of slavery, he broke forth in a strain of impassioned vehemence which carried every thing before him.