Mr. Lincoln was habitually very melancholy, and, as is often the case, sought for a proper balance of mind in the humour of which he had such a rare appreciation. When he had a great duty on hand, he would prepare his mind for it by reading “something funny.” As I write this, I am kindly supplied with an admirable illustration by Mr. Bret Harte. One evening the President, who had summoned his Cabinet at a most critical juncture, instead of proceeding to any business, passed half-an-hour in reading to them the comic papers of Orpheus C. Kerr (office-seeker), which had just appeared. But at last, when more than one gentleman was little less than offended at such levity, Mr. Lincoln rose, laid aside the book, and, with a most serious air, as of one who has brought his mind to a great point, produced and read the slips containing the Proclamation of Emancipation, and this he did with an earnestness and feeling which were electric, moving his auditors as they had seldom been moved. By far the best work of humour produced during the war, if it be not indeed the best work of purely American humour ever written, was the Petroleum V. Nasby papers. F. B. Carpenter relates that, on the Saturday before the President left Washington to go to Richmond, he had a most wearisome day, followed by an interview with several callers on business of great importance. Pushing everything aside, he said--“Have you seen the ‘Nasby Papers’?” “No, I have not,” was the answer; “what are they?” “There is a chap out in Ohio,” returned the President, “who has been writing a series of letters in the newspapers over the signature of Petroleum V. Nasby. Some one sent me a collection of them the other day. I am going to write to Petroleum to come down here, and I intend to tell him, if he will communicate his talent to me, I will swap places with him.” Thereupon he arose, went to a drawer in his desk, and taking out the letters, he sat down and read one to the company, finding in their enjoyment of it the temporary excitement and relief which another man would have found in a glass of wine. The moment he ceased, the book was thrown aside, his countenance relapsed into its habitual serious expression, and business was entered upon with the utmost earnestness. The author of these “Nasby Papers” was David R. Locke. After Mr. Lincoln’s death, two comic works, both well thumbed, indicating that they had been much read, were found in his desk. One was the “Nasby Letters,” and the other “The Book of Copperheads,” written and illustrated by myself and my brother, the late Henry P. Leland. This was kindly lent to me by Mr. M’Pherson, Clerk of the House of Representatives, that I might see how thoroughly Mr. Lincoln had read it. Both of these works were satires on that party in the North which sympathised with the South.