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66 try—were, not unfrequently, somewhat remiss in their duties.

"To this fact I now ventured to call the President's attention, saying that to me—perhaps from my European education—it appeared a deliberate courting of danger, even if the country were in a state of the profoundest peace, for the person at the head of the nation to remain so unprotected.

"'There are two dangers,' I wound up by saying; 'the danger of deliberate political assassination, and the mere brute violence of insanity.'

"Mr. Lincoln heard me through with a smile, his hands locked across his knees, his body rocking back and forth,—the common indication that he was amused.

"'Now, as to political assassination,' he said, 'do you think the Richmond people would like to have Hannibal Hamlin here any better than myself? In that one alternative, I have an insurance on my life worth half the prairie land of Illinois.  And beside,'—this more gravely,—'if there were such a plot, and they wanted to get at me, no vigilance could keep them out.  We are so mixed up in our affairs, that—no matter what the system established—a conspiracy to assassinate, if such there were, could easily obtain a pass to see me for any one or more of its instruments.

"'To betray fear of this, by placing guards or so forth, would only be to put the idea into their heads, and perhaps lead to the very result it was