Mrs. Lincoln: You said this was a great evening for me.  It is, and I’ll say more than I mostly do, because it is.  I’m likely to go into history now with a great man.  For I know better than any how great he is.  I’m plain looking and I’ve a sharp tongue, and I’ve a mind that doesn’t always go in his easy, high way.  And that’s what history will see, and it will laugh a little, and say, “Poor Abraham Lincoln.”  That’s all right, but it’s not all.  I’ve always known when he should go forward, and when he should hold back.  I’ve watched, and watched, and what I’ve learnt America will profit by.  There are women like that, lots of them.  But I’m lucky.  My work’s going farther than Illinois—­it’s going farther than any of us can tell.  I made things easy for him to think and think when we were poor, and now his thinking has brought him to this.  They wanted to make him Governor of Oregon, and he would have gone and have come to nothing there.  I stopped him.  Now they’re coming to ask him to be President, and I’ve told him to go.

Mr. Stone:  If you please, ma’am, I should like to apologise for smoking in here.

Mrs. Lincoln:  That’s no matter, Samuel Stone.  Only, don’t do it again.

Mr. Cuffney:  It’s a great place for a man to fill.  Do you know how Seward takes Abraham’s nomination by the Republicans?

Mrs. Lincoln:  Seward is ambitious.  He expected the nomination.  Abraham will know how to use him.

Mr. Stone:  The split among the Democrats makes the election of the Republican choice a certainty, I suppose?

Mrs. Lincoln:  Abraham says so.

Mr. Cuffney:  You know, it’s hard to believe.  When I think of the times I’ve sat in this room of an evening, and seen your husband come in, ma’am, with his battered hat nigh falling off the back of his head, and stuffed with papers that won’t go into his pockets, and god-darning some rascal who’d done him about an assignment or a trespass, I can’t think he’s going up there into the eyes of the world.

Mrs. Lincoln:  I’ve tried for years to make him buy a new hat.

Mr. Cuffney:  I have a very large selection just in from New York.  Perhaps Abraham might allow me to offer him one for his departure.

Mrs. Lincoln:  He might.  But he’ll wear the old one.

Mr. Stone:  Slavery and the South.  They’re big things he’ll have to deal with.  “The end of that is not yet.”  That’s what old John Brown said, “the end of that is not yet.”

ABRAHAM LINCOLN comes in, a greenish and crumpled top hat leaving his forehead well uncovered, his wide pockets brimming over with documents.  He is fifty, and he still preserves his clean-shaven state.  He kisses his wife and shakes hands with his friends.

Lincoln: Well, Mary.  How d’ye do, Samuel.  How d’ye do, Timothy.

Mr. Stone and Mr. Cuffney: Good-evening, Abraham.