"'He did, sir, and repeated it.'
"After a moment's pause, and looking up, the President said,—
"'If Stanton said I was a d—d fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always right, and generally says what he means. I will step over and see him.'"
Mr. Stanton was entirely without a sense of humor, and was the only member of the Cabinet who could not tolerate and could never understand Lincoln's stories and the reasons for his frequent resort to comic anecdotes and books of humor to relieve his mind from anxiety and the terrible strain that was always upon him. He never told a story himself, and would not waste his time listening to stories from others. With his unsympathetic disposition and nerveless constitution he could not understand the need of relaxation, and his serious mind regarded with disapproval and even contempt the simple remedies which the President applied as relief to his anxieties and care. Charles A. Dana, who was Mr. Stanton's assistant in the War Department, referring to this fact in his reminiscences, says,—
"The political struggle (November, 1864) had been most intense, and the interest taken in it, both in the White House and in the War Department, had been almost painful. I went over to the War Department about half-past eight in the evening and found the President and Mr. Stanton together in the Secretary's office. General Eckert, who then had charge of the telegraph department of the War Office, was coming in continually with telegrams containing election returns. Mr. Stanton would read them and the President would look at them and comment upon them. Presently there came a lull in the returns, and Mr. Lincoln called me up to a place by his side.
"'Dana,' said he, 'have you ever read any of the writings of Petroleum V. Nasby?'
"'No, sir,' I said. 'I have only looked at some of them, and they seemed to me quite funny.'
"'Well,' said he, 'let me read you a specimen,' and, pulling out a thin yellow-covered pamphlet from his breast-pocket, he began to read aloud. Mr. Stanton viewed this proceeding with great impatience, as I could see, but Mr. Lincoln paid no attention to that. He would read a page or a story, pause to con a new election telegram, and then open the book again and go ahead with a new passage. Finally Mr. Chase came in and presently Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and then the reading was interrupted. Mr. Stanton went to the door and beckoned me into the next room. I shall never forget the fire of his indignation at what seemed to him to be mere nonsense. The idea that when the safety of the republic was thus at issue, when the control of an empire was to be determined by a few figures brought in by the telegraph, the leader, the man most deeply concerned, not merely for himself but for his country, could turn aside to read such balderdash and to laugh at such frivolous jests, was to his mind something most repugnant and damnable. He could not understand, apparently, that it was by the relief which these jests afforded to the strain of mind under which Lincoln had so long been living and to the natural gloom of a melancholy and desponding temperament—this was Mr. Lincoln's prevailing characteristic—that the safety and sanity of his intelligence were maintained and preserved."