_Mr. Cuffney_: I have a very large selection just in from New York.
Perhaps Abraham might allow me to offer him one for his departure.

_Mrs. Lincoln_: He might. But he'll wear the old one.

_Mr. Stone_: Slavery and the South. They're big things he'll have to
deal with. "The end of that is not yet." That's what old John Brown
said, "the end of that is not yet."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN _comes in, a greenish and crumpled top hat leaving
his forehead well uncovered, his wide pockets brimming over with
documents. He is fifty, and he still preserves his clean-shaven state.
He kisses his wife and shakes hands with his friends._

_Lincoln:_ Well, Mary. How d'ye do, Samuel. How d'ye do, Timothy.

_Mr. Stone and Mr. Cuffney:_ Good-evening, Abraham.

_Lincoln (while he takes of his hat and shakes out sundry papers from
the lining into a drawer):_ John Brown, did you say? Aye, John Brown.
But that's not the way it's to be done. And you can't do the right
thing the wrong way. That's as bad as the wrong thing, if you're going
to keep the state together.

_Mr. Cuffney:_ Well, we'll be going. We only came in to give you
good-faring, so to say, in the great word you've got to speak this
evening.

_Mr. Stone:_ It makes a humble body almost afraid of himself, Abraham,
to know his friend is to be one of the great ones of the earth, with