“There are two opinions--radically different opinions--expressed about Mr. Lincoln’s will by men of equal and much capacity. One opinion is that he had _no_ will, and the other is that he was _all_ will--omnipotently so. These two opinions are loudly and honestly affirmed. Mr. Lincoln’s mind loved the true, the right, and good--all the great truths and principles in the mind of man. He loved the true first, the right second, and the good the least. His mind struggled for truths and his soul for substances. Neither in his heart nor in his soul did he care for forms, methods, ways,--the _non_-substantial facts or things. He could not by his very structure and formation in mind and body care anything about them. He did not intensely or much care for particular individual man--dollar, property, rank, order, manners, and such like things. He had no avarice in his nature, or other like vice.... What suited a little, narrow, critical mind, did not suit Mr. Lincoln’s, any more than a child’s clothes did his body. Generally, Mr. Lincoln did not take any interest in little local elections--town meetings. He attended no gatherings that pertained to local or other such interests, saving general political ones. He did not care (because he could not in his nature) who succeeded to the presidency of this or that Christian Association or Railroad Convention; who made the most money; who was going to Philadelphia; when and for what; and what were the costs of such a trip. He could not care who among friends got this office or that--who got to be street inspector or alley commissioner. No principle of goodness, of truth, or right was here. How could he be moved by such things as these? He could not understand why men struggled for such things. He made this remark to me one day--I think at Washington: ‘If ever this free people--if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office; a way to live without work; from which nature I am not free myself.’ It puzzled him a good deal at Washington to know and to get at the root of this dread desire,--this contagious disease of national robbery in the nation’s death-struggle.