"Nothing, Mr. President, save to pay my respects to you, as I am going home."
"Stay! it is such a luxury to see any one who does not want anything!"
He had the room cleared and discussed the war, interspersing the dialogue with apposite stories.--(Told by Senator C. M. Depew.)
"ACCUSE NOT A SERVANT----"
As the possibilities of rapid advancement were redoubled during the war, the President, in his first term of office, was stormed by the office-seekers, who thought it the best plan to have occupiers of posts ousted to give them an opening; so they maligned and even accused chief officials with a freedom unknown in other countries where the bureaucracy is a sacred institution--as within a generation it has become here. Lincoln rebuked one of these covetous vexers by saying gravely to him:
"Friend, go home and attentively read 'Proverbs,' chapter thirteen, verse ten."
The rebuffed applicant found at that page in the book: "Accuse not a servant to his master, lest he curse thee, and thou be found guilty!"--(Attested by Schuyler Colfax.)
A WOLF IN A TRAP MUST SACRIFICE HIS "TAIL" TO BE FREE.
The presidential private secretary, Stoddard, maintains that his chief sorely astonished and baffled the tribe of acquaintances who flocked in upon him as soon as he was elevated and went back home, with empty haversacks, wondering that he ignored them with heartless ingratitude. "He did not make even his own father a brigadier nor invite cousin Dennis Hanks to a seat in his Cabinet!"