Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v3.djvu/20

 xiv his convictions, and formed by them his thoughts and utterances. Mr. Lincoln's mind was not a wide, deep, broad, generalizing, and comprehensive mind, nor versatile, quick, bounding here and there, as emergencies demanded it. His mind was deep, enduring, and strong, running in deep iron grooves, with flanges on its wheels. His mind was not keen, sharp, and subtile; it was deep, exact, and strong.

Lincoln's Love of Truth.

I knew Mr. Lincoln very well, I may say somewhat intimately, before he was ever thought of in connection with the exalted station to which he was afterwards elected. In those years of his comparative obscurity, I knew him as preëminently a truthful man. His love of truth was conspicuous in all his thinking. The object of his pursuit was truth, and not victory in argument or the triumph of his party, or the success of his own cause. This was always conspicuous in his conversation. It constituted the charm of his conversation. In his society one plainly saw that his aim was so to use words as to express and not conceal his real thoughts. This characteristic had formed his style, both of conversation and of writing. His habitual love of truth had led him successfully to cultivate such a use of language as would most clearly and accurately express his thoughts. His words were a perfectly transparent medium through which his thought always shone out with unclouded distinctness. No matter on what subject he was speaking, any person