It is not generally known that the speech always made by the President, upon the presentation of a foreign minister, is carefully written for him by the Secretary of State. A clerk in the department, ignorant of this custom, was one day sent to the White House by Mr. Seward, with the speech to be delivered upon such an occasion. Mr. Lincoln was writing at his desk, as the clerk entered--a half-dozen senators and representatives occupying the sofa and chairs. Unable to disguise a feeling of delicacy, in the discharge of such an errand, the young man approached, and in a low voice said to the President: “The Secretary has sent the speech you are to make to-day to the Swiss minister.” Mr. Lincoln laid down his pen, and, taking the manuscript, said in a loud tone: “Oh, this is a speech Mr. Seward has written for me, is it? I guess I will try it before these gentlemen, and see how it goes.” Thereupon he proceeded to read it, in a waggish manner, remarking, as he concluded, with sly humor: “There, I like that. It has the merit of _originality_.” “Within a month after Mr. Lincoln’s first accession to office,” says the Hon. Mr. Raymond, “when the South was threatening civil war, and armies of office-seekers were besieging him in the Executive Mansion, he said to a friend that he wished he could get time to attend to the Southern question; he thought he knew what was wanted, and believed he could do something towards quieting the rising discontent; but the office-seekers demanded all his time. ‘I am,’ said he, ‘like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can’t stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.’ Two or three years later, when the people had made him a candidate for reëlection, the same friend spoke to him of a member of his Cabinet who was a candidate also. Mr. Lincoln said he did not concern himself much about that. It was important to the country that the department over which his rival presided should be administered with vigor and energy, and whatever would stimulate the Secretary to such action would do good. ‘R----,’ said he, ‘you were brought up on a farm, were you not? Then you know what a _chin fly_ is. My brother and I,’ he added, ‘were once ploughing corn on a Kentucky farm, I driving the horse, and he holding the plough. The horse was lazy; but on one occasion rushed across the field so that I, with my long legs, could scarcely keep pace with him. On reaching the end of the furrow, I found an enormous _chin fly_ fastened upon him, and knocked him off. My brother asked me what I did that for. I told him I didn’t want the old horse bitten in that way. “Why,” said my brother, “_that’s all that made him go_!” Now,’ said Mr. Lincoln, ‘if Mr. ---- has a presidential _chin fly_ biting him, I’m not going to knock him off, if it will only make his department _go_.’