“On entering his room again, I found him busily engaged in writing, at the same time repeating in a low voice the words of a poem which I remembered reading many years before.  When he stopped writing I asked him who was the author of that poem.  He replied, ’I do not know.  I have written the verses down from memory, at the request of a lady who is much pleased with them.’  He passed the sheet, on which he had written the verses, to me, saying, ‘Have you ever read them?’ I replied that I had, many years previously, and that I should be pleased to have a copy of them in his handwriting, when he had time and an inclination for such work.  He said, ‘Well, you may keep that copy, if you wish.’”

Hon. William D. Kelly, a Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, relates that during the time of McClellan’s Peninsular campaign he called at the White House one morning, and while waiting to see the President, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts entered the chamber, having with him four distinguished-looking Englishmen.  The President, says Mr. Kelly, “had evidently had an early appointment, and had not completed his toilet.  He was in slippers, and his pantaloons, when he crossed one knee over the other, disclosed the fact that he wore heavy blue woollen stockings.  It was an agreeable surprise to learn that the chief of the visiting party was Professor Goldwin Smith of Canada, one of the firmest of our British friends.  As the President rose to greet them, he was the very impersonation of easy dignity, notwithstanding the negligence of his costume.  With a tact that never deserted him, he opened the conversation with an inquiry as to the health of his friend John Bright, whom he said he regarded as a friend of our country and of freedom everywhere.  The visitors having been seated, the magnitude of recent battles was referred to by Professor Smith as preliminary to the question whether the enormous losses which were so frequently occurring would not so reduce the industrial resources of the North as to affect seriously the prosperity of individual citizens and consequently the revenue of the country.  He justified the question by proceeding to recite the number of killed, wounded, and missing, reported after some of the great battles recently fought.  There were two of Mr. Lincoln’s official friends who lived in dread of his little stories.  Neither of them was gifted with humor, and both could understand his propositions, which were always distinct and clean cut, without such familiar illustrations as those in which he so often indulged; and they were chagrined whenever they were compelled to hear him resort to his stories in the presence of distinguished strangers.  They were Senator Wilson of Massachusetts and Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War; and, as Professor Smith closed his arithmetical statement, the time came for the Massachusetts Senator to bite his lips, for the President, crossing his legs in such a manner as to show that his blue stockings were long