Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/373

 were wont to express their thoughts and sentiments, I was less disturbed by what Sumner sometimes interpreted as a lack of seriousness, an inclination to make light of grave things, in Lincoln's utterances. Thus Sumner's confidence in Lincoln's character and principles found itself often more heavily taxed than mine.

Lincoln had great respect for the superior knowledge and culture of other persons. But he did not stand in awe of them. In fact, he did not stand in awe of anybody or anything in the sense of a recognition of an apparent superiority that might have made him in the slightest degree surrender the independence of his own judgment or the freedom of his will. He would have approached the greatest man in the world—the greatest in point of mental capacity, or the greatest in point of station or power—with absolute unconcern, as if he had been dealing with such persons all his life. When he formed his Cabinet he chose the foremost leaders of his party, who at that period might well have been regarded as the foremost men of the country, without the slightest apprehension that their prestige or their ability might overshadow him. He always recognized the merit of others, but without any fear of detracting from his own.

There was no man in authority in the world whose opinion or advice he would have estimated by another standard than its intrinsic value as he judged it. There was not a problem to be solved capable of confusing his mind by its magnitude or dignity, or one that would have caused him to apply to it any other rules than those of ordinary logic and common sense. He therefore met great statesmen and titled persons with the absolutely natural, instinctive, unaffected self-respect of an equal; he regarded great affairs as simple business he had to deal with in the way of his public duty, and he loved to discuss them with