In 1864, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York _Tribune_, and a great authority among the farming class and the extremists, consented to attend an abortive peace consultation with Southern representatives, George N. Sanders, Beverly Tucker, and Clement C. Clay, at Niagara Falls. Clay was so set upon Jefferson Davis being still left as a ruler in some high degree which would condone his action as President of the seceded States, the project, like others, was a "fizzle," as Lincoln would have said. To our President, Henry Clay was the "beau-ideal of a statesman"; but it was clear that his namesake was not of the Clay to cement a new Union! * * * * * "THE MAN DOWN SOUTH." In August, 1864, a painful absorption was noticed in the President's manner, growing more and more strained and depressed. The ancient smile was fainter when it flitted over the long-drawn features, and the eyes seemed to bury themselves out of sight in the cavernous sockets, too dry for tears. These withdrawing fits were not uncommon, but they had become frequent this summer, and at the reception he had mechanically passed the welcome and given the hand-shake. But then the abstraction became so dense that he let an old friend stand before him without a glance, much less the usual hearty greeting expected. The newcomer, alarmed, ventured to arouse him. He shook off his absence of mind, seized the hand proffered him, and, while grasping it, exclaimed as though no others were by, also staring and pained: "Excuse me! I was thinking--thinking of a man--down South!" He was thinking of Sherman--that military genius who "burned his ships and penetrated a hostile country," like Cortez, and from whom no reliable news had been received while he was investing Savannah. Lincoln had in his mind been accompanying his captain on that forlorn march--"smashing things"--to the sea. * * * * * THE DISMEMBERED "YALLER" DOG. Toward the end of December, 1864, the news trickled in of the utter discomfiture of Confederate General Hood's army at Nashville, by General Thomas. An enthusiastic friend of the President said to him: "There is not enough left of _Hood_ to make a dish-rag, is there?" "Well, no, Medill; I think Hood's army is in about the identical fix of Bill Sykes' dog (the application from Dickens is noticeable as showing Lincoln's eclectic reading) down in Sangamon County. Did you never hear it?" As a Chicago man Mr. Medill might be allowed to be ignorant of Sangamon Valley incidents.