"Where God speaks to Jones, in the very same tones,
That he uses to Hadley and Dwight."

Though Lincoln's queer aplomb, his good-humored familiarity on first
acquaintance, delighted most of his visitors, it offended many. It was
lacking in tact. Often it was a clumsy attempt to be jovial too soon, as
when he addressed Greeley by the name of "Horace" almost on first sight.
His devices for putting men on the familiar footing lacked originality.
The frequency with which he called upon a tall visitor to measure up
against him reveals the poverty of his social invention. He applied this
device with equal thoughtlessness to the stately Sumner, who protested,
and to a nobody who grinned and was delighted.

It was this mere envelope of the genius that was deplorably evident on
the journey from Springfield to Washington. There was one detail of the
journey that gave his enemies a more definite ground for sneering. By
the irony of fate, the first clear instance of Lincoln's humility, his
reluctance to set up his own judgment against his advisers, was also
his first serious mistake. There is a distinction here that is vital.
Lincoln was entering on a new role, the role of the man of action.
Hitherto all the great decisions of his life had been speculative; they
had developed from within; they dealt with ideas. The inflexible side of
him was intellectual. Now, without any adequate apprenticeship, he was
called upon to make practical decisions, to decide on courses of action,
at one step to pass from the dream of statecraft to its application.
Inevitably, for a considerable time, he was two people; he passed back
and forth from one to the other; only by degrees did he bring the two
together. Meanwhile, he appeared contradictory. Inwardly, as a thinker,
his development was unbroken; he was still cool, inflexible, drawing all
his conclusions out of the depths of himself. Outwardly, in action,