Mr. Lincoln read men and women quickly, and was so keen a judge of their peculiarities that none escaped his observation. Once a very attractive woman consumed a good deal of Mr. Lincoln's time. He finally dismissed her with a card directed to Secretary Stanton on which he had written: "This woman, dear Stanton, is a little smarter than she looks to be." CHAPTER IX. THE ANTIETAM EPISODE.--LINCOLN'S LOVE OF SONG. In the autumn of 1862 I chanced to be associated with Mr. Lincoln in a transaction which, though innocent and commonplace in itself, was blown by rumor and surmise into a revolting and deplorable scandal. A conjectural lie, although mean, misshapen, and very small at its birth, grew at length into a tempest of defamation, whose last echoes were not heard until its noble victim had yielded his life to a form of assassination only a trifle more deadly. Mr. Lincoln was painted as the prime mover in a scene of fiendish levity more atrocious than the world had ever witnessed since human nature was shamed and degraded by the capers of Nero and Commodus. I refer to what is known as the Antietam song-singing; and I propose to show that the popular construction put upon that incident was wholly destitute of truth. Mr. Lincoln persistently declined to read the harsh comments of the newspaper press and the fierce mouthings of platform orators; and under his advice I as persistently refused to make any public statement concerning that ill-judged affair. He believed with Sir Walter Scott, that, if a cause of action is good, it needs no vindication from the actor's motives; if bad, it can derive none. When I suggested to him that the slander ought to be refuted,--that a word from him would silence his defamers,--Mr. Lincoln replied with great earnestness: "No, Hill; there has already been too much said about this falsehood. Let the thing alone. If I have not established character enough to give the lie to this charge, I can only say that I am mistaken in my own estimate of myself. In politics, every man must skin his own skunk. These fellows are welcome to the hide of this one. Its body has already given forth its unsavory odor." The newspapers and the stump-speakers went on "stuffing the ears of men with false reports" until the fall of 1864, when I showed to Mr. Lincoln a letter, of which the following is a copy. It is a fair sample of hundreds of letters received by me about that time, the Antietam incident being then discussed with increased virulence and new accessions of false coloring. PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 10, 1864. WARD H. LAMON: _Dear Sir_,--Enclosed is an extract from the New York "World" of Sept. 9, 1864:--