And so they had their ride out without their hands being in guards.
THE USE OF BOOKS.
"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new, after all."--(By an Illinois clergyman, knowing Lincoln in the 'Fifties.)
LINCOLN'S BOOK CRITICISM.
"For those who like this kind of book, this is the kind of book they will like."--(New York Times Book Review, July 7, 1901.)
THE HAND-TO-HAND ENCOUNTER.
Toward the evident close of the struggle an English nobleman came to Washington, credited to the embassy. This was somewhat impudent and imprudent of him, too, as, in early times, he was prominent among the British aristocrats who had supported the Confederate States. He had assisted in their being declared belligerents--a sore point. He had invested in the "Cotton Loan," and voted in sustenance of the Lairds getting the rebel pirates out of the Mersey. Altogether, he must have attended the regular White House reception from thinking his hostility was unrecorded. But the President was clearly prepared for the fox-paw! He spoke to the Briton smoothly enough, but when the unsuspecting hand was placed in his grasp he gave it one of those natural and not formal grips which left an impression on him forever. The balladist's line was realized for him: "It is hard to give the hand where the heart can never be."
BETTER SOMETIMES RIGHT THAN ALL TIMES WRONG.
In 1832, when candidate for the Illinois legislative chambers, Lincoln said he held it "a sound maxim better only sometimes to be right than at all times wrong."