The impression which he made on the country at the opening of this period was unfortunate. The very power that had hitherto been the making of him--the literary power, revealing to men in wonderfully convincing form the ideas which they felt within them but could not utter--this had deserted him. Explain the psychology of it any way you will, there is the fact! The speeches Lincoln made on the way to Washington during the latter part of February were appallingly unlike himself. His mind had suddenly fallen dumb. He had nothing to say. The gloom, the desolation that had penetrated his soul, somehow, for the moment, made him commonplace. When he talked--as convention required him to do at all his stopping places--his words were but faint echoes of the great political exponent he once had been. His utterances were fatuous; mere exhortations to the country not to worry. "There is no crisis but an artificial one," he said.(1) And the country stood aghast! Amazement, bewilderment, indignation, was the course of the reaction in many minds of his own party. Their verdict was expressed in the angry language of Samuel Bowles, "Lincoln is a Simple Susan."(2) In private talk, Lincoln admitted that he was "more troubled about the outlook than he thought it discreet to show." This remark was made to a "Public Man," whose diary has been published but whose identity is still secret. Though keenly alert for any touch of weakness or absurdity in the new President, calling him "the most ill-favored son of Adam I ever saw," the Public Man found him "crafty and sensible." In conversation, the old Lincoln, the matchless phrase-maker, could still express himself. At New York he was told of a wild scheme that was on foot to separate the city from the North, form a city state such as Hamburg then was, and set up a commercial alliance with the Confederacy. "As to the free city business," said Lincoln, "well, I reckon it will be some time before the front door sets up bookkeeping on its own account."(3) The formal round of entertainment on his way to Washington wearied Lincoln intensely. Harassed and preoccupied, he was generally ill at ease. And he was totally unused to sumptuous living. Failures in social usage were inevitable. New York was convulsed with amusement because at the opera he wore a pair of huge black kid gloves which attracted the attention of the whole house, "hanging as they did over the red velvet box front." At an informal reception, between acts in the director's room, he looked terribly bored and sat on the sofa at the end of the room with his hat pushed back on his head. Caricatures filled the opposition papers. He was spoken of as the "Illinois ape" and the "gorilla." Every rash remark, every "break" in social form, every gaucherie was seized upon and ridiculed with-out mercy.