that had penetrated his soul, somehow, for the moment, made him
commonplace. When he talked--as convention required him to do at all his
stopping places--his words were but faint echoes of the great
political exponent he once had been. His utterances were fatuous; mere
exhortations to the country not to worry. "There is no crisis but an
artificial one," he said.(1) And the country stood aghast! Amazement,
bewilderment, indignation, was the course of the reaction in many minds
of his own party. Their verdict was expressed in the angry language of
Samuel Bowles, "Lincoln is a Simple Susan."(2)

In private talk, Lincoln admitted that he was "more troubled about the
outlook than he thought it discreet to show." This remark was made to a
"Public Man," whose diary has been published but whose identity is still
secret. Though keenly alert for any touch of weakness or absurdity in
the new President, calling him "the most ill-favored son of Adam I ever
saw," the Public Man found him "crafty and sensible." In conversation,
the old Lincoln, the matchless phrase-maker, could still express
himself. At New York he was told of a wild scheme that was on foot to
separate the city from the North, form a city state such as Hamburg then
was, and set up a commercial alliance with the Confederacy. "As to the
free city business," said Lincoln, "well, I reckon it will be some time
before the front door sets up bookkeeping on its own account."(3) The
formal round of entertainment on his way to Washington wearied Lincoln
intensely. Harassed and preoccupied, he was generally ill at ease. And
he was totally unused to sumptuous living. Failures in social usage were
inevitable. New York was convulsed with amusement because at the opera
he wore a pair of huge black kid gloves which attracted the attention of
the whole house, "hanging as they did over the red velvet box front."
At an informal reception, between acts in the director's room, he looked
terribly bored and sat on the sofa at the end of the room with his hat