I consider it very desirable that the report of Mr. Lincoln's speech, embodying the final revision, should be preserved in book form.... The text in the pamphlet now in your hands is authentic and conclusive. Mr. Lincoln read the proof both of the address and of the notes. I am glad that you are to include in your reprint the letters from Mr. Lincoln, as these letters authenticate this copy of the address as the copy which was corrected by him with his own hand.... The preface to the address, written in September, 1860, has interest because it shows what we thought of the address at that time.... Your worthy father was, if I remember rightly, one of the vice-presidents of the meeting.... Yours faithfully, CHARLES C. NOTT. _(From Cephas Brainerd)_ NEW YORK, August 18, 1909. DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM: I am very glad to learn that there is good prospect that the real Lincoln Cooper Institute address, with the evidence in regard to it, will now be available for the public.... I am glad also that with the address you are proposing to print the letters received by Judge Nott from Mr. Lincoln. One or two of these have, unfortunately, not been preserved. I recall in one an observation made by Lincoln to the effect that he "was not much of a literary man." I did not see much of Mr. Lincoln when he was in New York, as my most active responsibility in regard to the meeting was in getting up an audience.... I remember in handing some weeks earlier to John Sherman, who, like Lincoln, had never before spoken in New York, five ten-dollar gold pieces, that he said he "had not expected his expenses to be paid." At a lunch that was given to Sherman a long time afterward, I referred to that meeting. Sherman cocked his eye at me and said: "Yes, I remember it very well; I never was so scar't in all my life." ... The observations of Judge Nott in regard to the meeting are about as just as anything that has ever been put into print, and as I concur fully in the accuracy of these recollections, I do not undertake to give my own impressions at any length. I was expecting to hear some specimen of Western stump-speaking as it was then understood. You will, of course, observe that the speech contains nothing of the kind. I do remember, however, that Lincoln spoke of the condition of feeling between the North and the South.... He refers to the treatment which Northern men received in the South, and he remarked, parenthetically, that he had never known of a man who had been able "to whip his wife into loving him," an observation that produced laughter.