"Oh, yes; General Knox," said the President. "Stanton, that message is for you; it is from your predecessor. I should like to ask General Knox when this rebellion will be put down." The answer was oracularly indefinite. The medium then called up Napoleon, who thought one thing, Lafayette another, and Franklin differed from both. "Ah!" exclaimed the President; "opinions differ among the saints as well as among the sinners. Their talk is very much like the talk of my Cabinet. I should like, if possible, to hear what Judge Douglas says about this war," said the President. After an interval, the medium rose from his chair and, resting his left hand on the back, his right into his bosom, spoke in a voice no one could mistake who had ever heard Mr. Douglas. He urged the President to throw aside all advisers who hesitated about the policy to be pursued, and said that, if victory were followed up by energetic action, all would be well. "I believe that," said the President, "whether it comes from spirit or human. It needs not a ghost from the bourne from which no traveller returns to tell that." His taint of superstition, like his tendency to melancholy, was doubtless inherited from his ancestors and was shared by all sensitive people whose lives were spent in the mysterious solitude and isolation of the Western frontier. It is manifested by the denizens of the forests, the mountains, and the plains, and wherever else sensitive natures are subjected to loneliness and the company of their own thoughts. Lincoln's mind was peculiarly sensitive to impressions; his nature was intensely sympathetic, his imagination was vivid, and his observation was keen and comprehensive. With all his candor, he was reticent and secretive in matters that concerned himself, and the struggle of his early life, his dismal and depressing surroundings, the death of his mother, and the physical conditions in which he was born and bred were just the influences to develop the morbid tendency which was manifested on several occasions in such a manner as to cause anxiety and even alarm among his friends. He realized the danger of submitting to it, and the cure invented and prescribed by himself was to seek for the humorous side of every event and incident and to read all the humorous books he could find. His poetic temperament was developed early and frequently manifested while he was in the White House. He loved melancholy as well as humorous poems. He could repeat hymns by the hundreds, and quoted Dr. Watts' and John Wesley's verses as frequently as he did Shakespeare or Petroleum V. Nasby or Artemas Ward. His favorite poem was "Oh! Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud."