“What I don’t see,” says Swett, “is how he learned all the things he knows. They ain’t the kind of things you’d naturally think a president of the United States would be interestin’ himself in.” There ’twas,--same old fool notion that a president ought to sit inside somewhere and think about the Constitution. I used to be that way--always saw a president lookin’ like that old picture of Thomas Jefferson up there settin’ beside a parlor table holdin’ a roll of parchment in his hand, and Leonard Swett was like me a little in spite of his bein’ educated. Learned it! Think of Leonard Swett askin’ that with all _his_ chances of bein’ with Mr. Lincoln! Learned it just as he had everything by bein’ so dead interested. He’d learned it if he hadn’t been president at all, if he’d just been loafin’ around Washington doin’ nuthin’. Greatest hand to take notice of things. I tell you he’d made a great war correspondent. Things he’d ’a’ seen! And the way he’d ’a’ told ’em! I can just see him now pumpin’ everybody that had been to the front. Great man to make you talk, Mr. Lincoln was. I’ve heard him say himself that most of the education he had he’d got from people who thought they was learnin’ from him. I reckon he learned a lot more from soldiers about how the armies was bein’ taken care of than he did from generals. My brother Isaac, who had a place down there addin’ up figgers or something used to tell me of seein’ Mr. Lincoln stoppin’ ’em on the street and out around the White House and talkin’ to ’em. Isaac said ’twa’n’t becomin’ in the President of the United States to be so familiar with common soldiers, he ought to keep among the generals and members of the administration. Isaac always reckoned _himself_ a member of the administration. “More than that,” says Isaac, “it ain’t dignified for a president to be always runnin’ out after things himself instead of sendin’ somebody. He’s always goin’ over to the telegraph office with messages, and settin’ down by the operators talkin’ and readin’ dispatches and waitin’ for answers. One day he came right up to my office to ask me to look up the record of Johnnie Banks, old Aunt Sally Banks’ boy, that was goin’ to be shot for desertion. Seemed to think I’d be interested because he came from Illinois--came right up there instead of sendin’ for me to go to the White House like he ought to, and when I took what I found over to him and he found out Johnnie wa’n’t but eighteen, he put on his hat and went over himself to the telegraph office, took me along, and sent a message that I saw, sayin’, ‘_I don’t want anybody as young as eighteen to be shot_.’ And that night he went back and sent another message askin’ if they’d received the first--wasn’t satisfied till he knew it couldn’t happen. There wa’n’t any reason why he should spend his time that way. He ought to give orders and let other folks see they’re carried out. That’s what I’d do if I was president.”