great gentleman; there were but few among the really well-educated men of America who made much of his lacking some of the minor points of gentility to which most of them were born; but of these few Chase betrayed himself as one.  At the beginning of 1864 Chase was putting it about that he had himself no wish to be President, but—­; that of course he was loyal to Mr. Lincoln, but—­; and so forth.  He had, as indeed he deserved, admirers who wished he should be President, and early in the year some of them expressed this wish in a manifesto.  Chase wrote to Lincoln that this was not his own doing; Lincoln replied that he himself knew as little of these things “as my friends will allow me to know.”  To those who spoke to him of Chase’s intrigues he only said that Chase would in some ways make a very good President, and he hoped they would never have a worse President than he.  The movement in favour of Chase collapsed very soon, and it evidently had no effect on Lincoln.  Chase, however, was beginning to foster grievances of his own against Lincoln.  These related always to appointments in the service of the Treasury.  He professed a horror of party influences in appointments, and imputed corrupt motives to Lincoln in such matters.  He shared the sound ideas of the later civil service reformers, though he was far too easily managed by a low class of flatterers to have been of the least use in carrying them out.  Lincoln would certainly not at that crisis have permitted strife over civil service reform, but some of his admirers have probably gone too far in claiming him as a sturdy supporter of the old school who would despise the reforming idea.  Letters of his much earlier betray his doubts as to the old system, and he was exactly the man who in quieter times could have improved matters with the least possible fuss.  However that may be, all the tiresome circumstances of Chase’s differences with him are well known, and in these instances Lincoln was clearly in the right, and Chase quarrelled only because he could not force upon him appointments that would have created fury.  Once Chase was overruled and wrote his resignation.  Lincoln went to him with the resignation in his hand, treated him with simple affection for a man whom he still liked, and made him take it back.  Later on Chase got his own way on the whole, but was angry and sent another resignation.  Some one heard of it and came to Lincoln to say that the loss of Chase would cause a financial panic.  Lincoln’s answer was to this effect:  “Chase thinks he has become indispensable to the country; that his intimate friends know it, and he cannot comprehend why the country does not understand it.  He also thinks he ought to be President; has no doubt whatever about that.  It is inconceivable to him why people do not rise as one man and say so.  He is a great statesman, and at the bottom a patriot.  Ordinarily he discharges the duties of a public office with greater ability than any man I know.  Mind, I say ‘ordinarily,’