When he met his first cabinet, there were gathered around the table two men of extraordinary brilliancy of intellect, another of splendid repute and vast experience, and all of them were men of perhaps finer intellectual quality, and certainly had many advantages, both natural and acquired, which he did not possess. Yet Secretary Whitney, speaking of this meeting to an old college friend of his, some time after, said, “When we met the President in the cabinet room, we had not been there ten minutes before we realized that ‘Where MacGregor sat, there was the head of the table.’” Whitney himself was the only member of the cabinet who was younger than Cleveland, and three members of it had been active in public life before Cleveland was admitted to the bar. After Mr. Cleveland had been elected to the presidency the second time, but before his inauguration, he spent an evening with a gentleman whose political experience began with the formation of the Republican party. They were together in Mr. Cleveland’s library in New York, until long past midnight. The conversation touched upon public men and political history, and it was then revealed to his visitor that Mr. Cleveland had that order of intellect which absorbs not from books but from personal contact with men of experience. It was evident that he had learned far more of public men than he was believed to know, and he had gleaned this information by persistent inquiry. It was made plain that he got such grasp of public questions as he possessed, by searching investigation, not of books, but of men’s minds and experience. Late that night Mr. Cleveland asked his visitor about Lincoln, being anxious to know everything that this man could tell him about the Republican party’s first President; and when Mr. Cleveland put a certain question to his friend, then it was made plain that Lincoln’s career had been deeply studied by Mr. Cleveland, and that he anxiously sought to learn the secret of his mastery of men and direction of events. That question was, “How was Mr. Lincoln able to overcome the politicians, to defeat conspiracies, to control a half-rebellious and not personally loyal cabinet, and to maintain himself in spite of attack, open and insidious?” And the visitor, who knew Lincoln well, said in reply, “Mr. Cleveland, Lincoln did this because he weighed every act by his judgment of what the estimation of the plain people of the country would be about it. He reached over the heads of the politicians, and out to that great body of American citizens whom he called ‘the plain people.’ He believed that the plain people were year in and out accurate in their judgments, and he believed that the man who had their confidence could face the politicians with contempt even, because he was sure to be right.”