Mrs. Stowe had much to tell him about the condition of thought in England which she had learned from observation during her visits there and through the letters she constantly received from people of weight and importance who were watching with intense interest the progress of our bitter conflict. He on his part was able to interpret to her his border state policy which had been a burden of misunderstanding upon her mind; he explained the reasons why it had been necessary for him to proceed slowly and why the time for a more decided step had come at last. We know comparatively little about the conversation that went on by the window, but we do know that these were its subjects. She said that she desired, if possible, to have it made clear to her that the government was not to take any steps backward in the course on which it had started out, before she could with dignity write the answer to the “Address.” Abraham Lincoln made it clear. He set her mind quite at rest on that point. Before they parted he said in effect what he afterwards repeated in the Second Inaugural: “If this struggle were to be prolonged till there was not a home in the land where there was not one dead, till all the treasure amassed by the unpaid labor of the slave should be wasted, till every drop of blood drawn by the lash should be atoned by blood drawn by the sword, we could only bow and say, ‘Just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints!’” This was indeed a passage from his inmost soul. Sometimes a great man has an hour in which he finds it comforting to open his heart to the compassionate ear of a woman. Without disrespect to his revered memory we may believe that President Lincoln did on this day find such a relief in talking with a woman whose book with its key and whose letters and articles had proved not only the sensitive sympathy and flame-like patriotism of her soul, but also the statesman-like grasp of her mind.