and good-will from the start.  He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent passages.  He is not a wit, a humorist, or a clown; yet so fine a vein of pleasantry and good-nature pervades what he says, gliding over a deep current of poetical arguments, that he keeps his hearers in a smiling mood, ready to swallow all he says.  His sense of the ludicrous is very keen; and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his arguments—­not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas.  For the first half-hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered; and from that point he began to lead them off little by little, until it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold.”

The Rev. John.  P. Gulliver, of Norwich, Connecticut, has given a most interesting reminiscence of Lincoln’s speech in that city while on his tour through New England.  On the morning following the speech he met Lincoln on a railroad train, and entered into conversation with him.  In speaking of his speech, Mr. Gulliver remarked to Lincoln that he thought it the most remarkable one he ever heard.  “Are you sincere in what you say?” inquired Lincoln.  “I mean every word of it,” replied the minister; “indeed, I learned more of the art of public speaking last evening than I could from a whole course of lectures on rhetoric.”  Then Lincoln informed him of a “most extraordinary circumstance” that had occurred at New Haven a few days previous.  A professor of rhetoric in Yale College, he had been told, came to hear him, took notes of his speech, and gave a lecture on it to his class the following day, and, not satisfied with that, followed him to Meriden the next evening and heard him again for the same purpose.  All this seemed to Lincoln to be “very extraordinary.”  He had been sufficiently astonished by his success in the West, but he had no expectation of any marked success in the East, particularly among literary and learned men.  “Now,” said Lincoln, “I should like very much to know what it is in my speech which you thought so remarkable, and which interested my friend the professor so much.”  Mr. Gulliver’s answer was:  “The clearness of your statements, the unanswerable style of your reasoning, and especially your illustrations, which were romance and pathos and fun and logic all welded together.”  After Mr. Gulliver had fully satisfied his curiosity by a further exposition of the politician’s peculiar power, Lincoln said:  “I am much obliged to you for this.  I have been wishing for a long time to find someone who would make this analysis for me.  It throws light on a subject which has been dark to me.  I can understand very readily how such a power as you have ascribed to me will account for the effect which seems to be produced by my speeches.  I hope you have not been too flattering in your estimate.  Certainly I have had a most wonderful success for a man of my limited education.”  Mr. Gulliver then inquired into the processes by which he had acquired his education,