A lady who once rode with Lincoln, in the Presidential carriage, to the Soldiers’ Home, gives some interesting details concerning his knowledge of woodcraft.  “Around the ‘Home,’” says this lady, “grows every variety of tree, particularly of the evergreen class.  Their branches brushed into the carriage as we passed along, and left with us that pleasant woodsy smell belonging to fresh leaves.  One of the ladies, catching a bit of green from one of these intruding branches, said it was cedar, and another thought it spruce.  ’Let me discourse on a theme I understand,’ said the President.  ’I know all about trees, by right of being a backwoodsman.  I’ll show you the difference between spruce, pine, and cedar, and this shred of green, which is neither one nor the other, but a kind of illegitimate cypress.’  He then proceeded to gather specimens of each, and explain the distinctive formation of foliage belonging to every species.  ‘Trees,’ he said, ’are as deceptive in their likeness to one another as are certain classes of men, amongst whom none but a physiognomist’s eye can detect dissimilar moral features until events have developed them.  Do you know it would be a good thing if in all the schools proposed and carried out by the improvement of modern thinkers, we could have a school of events?’ ‘A school of events?’ repeated the lady addressed.  ‘Yes,’ he continued, ’since it is only by that active development that character and ability can be tested.  Understand me, I now mean men, not trees; they can be tried, and an analysis of their strength obtained less expensive to life and human interests than man’s.  What I say now is a mere whim, you know; but when I speak of a school of events, I mean one in which, before entering real life, students might pass through the mimic vicissitudes and situations that are necessary to bring out their powers and mark the calibre to which they are assigned.  Thus, one could select from the graduates an invincible soldier, equal to any position, with no such word as fail; a martyr to right, ready to give up life in the cause; a politician too cunning to be outwitted; and so on.  These things have all to be tried, and their sometime failure creates confusion as well as disappointment.  There is no more dangerous or expensive analysis than that which consists of trying a man.’”

Among Lincoln’s callers one Sunday evening, was the distinguished scientist Louis Agassiz.  The two men were somewhat alike in their simple, shy, and unpretending nature, and at first felt their way with each other like two bashful schoolboys.  Lincoln began conversation by saying to Agassiz, “I never knew how to pronounce your name properly; won’t you give me a little lesson at that, please?” Then he asked if the name were of French or Swiss derivation, to which the Professor replied that it was partly of each.  That led to a discussion of different languages, the President speaking several words in different languages which had the same root