A gentleman once complimented the President on having no vices, neither drinking nor smoking. “That is a doubtful compliment,” answered the President; “I recollect once being outside a stage-coach, in Illinois, and a man sitting by me offered me a cigar. I told him I had no vices. He said nothing, but smoked for some time, and then growled out: ‘It’s my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues.’” Mr. Lincoln’s aversion to calls for a speech that must be merely “off-hand,” was decided; yet, unwilling altogether to disappoint the crowds, who perhaps too often made such demands of him, he seldom excused himself altogether from speaking. One evening a friend was conversing with him in his room, when his quick ear caught the sound of approaching music, and his countenance suddenly changed, as he inquired its meaning, though readily divining it. A serenade was presently announced by an usher, and Mr. Lincoln, as he arose to go forward to the front window, lingered a moment, and said:-- “These ‘serenade’ speeches bother me a good deal, they are so hard to make. I feel very much like the steam doctor, who said he could get along very well in his practice with almost every case, but he was always a little puzzled when it came to mending a broken leg.” It has been repeatedly said that Mr. Lincoln lacked imagination and poetic sensibility. Surely, the soul which could conceive the last inaugural, or indite the closing sentence of the first, was not wanting in these elements:-- “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Neither was the mind deficient in enthusiasm, which could prophesy:-- “There are already those among us, who, if the Union be preserved, will live to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions. The struggle _of_ to-day is not altogether _for_ to-day; it is for a vast future also.” “The President,” said a leading member of the Cabinet, on one occasion, “is his own War-Minister. He directs personally the movements of the armies, and is fond of strategy; but pays much less attention to official details than is generally supposed.” Mr. Lincoln’s wit was never malicious nor rudely personal. Once when Mr. Douglas had attempted to parry an argument by impeaching the veracity of a senator whom Mr. Lincoln had quoted, he answered that the question was not one of veracity, but simply one of argument. “By a course of reasoning, Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar?”[15]