"The next gentleman introduced by Mr. Reed is Col. James H. Matheny. He is made to say, in a letter addressed to Mr. Reed, that he did not write the statement in Lamon's 'Life of Lincoln.' I do not claim that he did. I wrote it in the court house--this hall--in Mr. Matheny's presence, and at his dictation. I read it over to him and he approved it. I wrote it all at once as he spoke it to me; it is not made up of scraps--'a mere collection of sayings gathered from private conversations, that were only true of Mr. Lincoln's earlier life.' I say that this statement was written all at one time and place, and not at different times and places. Let any critic, any man of common sense, read it and he will say: 'This was all written at once.' I appeal to the manner--the close connection of words and ideas in which it runs--word with word, sentence with sentence, and idea with idea, for the proof that it was made at one sitting. Mr. Matheny has often told me that Mr. Lincoln was an Infidel. He admits this in his letter to Mr. Reed. He never intimated in that or any other conversation with me that he believed that Mr. Lincoln in his later life became a Christian." In a letter dated Sept. 14, 1887, Mr. Herndon writes: "I acted in this matter honestly, and I will always abide by my notes taken down at the time. I was cautious--very careful of what I did, because I knew that the church would damn me and prove me false if it could. I stood on the exactness of truth squarely." I have thus far assumed that Stuart and Matheny really wrote the letters of disclaimer addressed to Reed. Mr. Reed states that he is "amazed to find" that they did not write the statements attributed to them by Lamon. The reader is by this time sufficiently familiar with this reverend gentleman's methods that he will _not_ be "amazed to find" that Stuart and Matheny did not write these disclaimers. I now affirm that James H. Matheny did not write a word of the letter purporting to have been written by him. _It was written by the Rev. J. A. Reed!_ We have not the expressed declaration of Mr. Stuart that this is true of the letter imputed to him, but there is other evidence which makes it clearly apparent that this letter was also written by Mr. Reed. Nor is this all. I shall now endeavor to show that the greater part of the evidence presented by Reed, in his lecture, was composed and written by himself. Let us take the four letters credited respectively to Edwards, Lewis, Stuart, and Matheny. I shall attempt to demonstrate the common origin of these letters, first, by their form; secondly, by the language of their contents.