in either his private or public career. He was my father's friend. I
think he meant well, and am glad that our most authoritative historian
of the period, Rhodes, can say that he discharged the duties of his
high office "with ability and honour."

When in February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, on his way to Washington,
arrived in Buffalo Saturday night and it became known he would spend
Sunday, the town was alive with curiosity as to where he would go
to church. Mr. Lincoln was Mr. Fillmore's guest. They had known
each other well in Congress--Fillmore a veteran at the head of the
Committee of Ways and Means, Lincoln then quite unknown, serving his
only term. Both were Whigs of the old school, in close contact and I
suppose not afterwards far apart. Lincoln was prepared to execute
the Fugitive Slave Law, while Fillmore was devoted to the Union,
and probably would have admitted at the end that Lincoln's course
throughout was good. My father's church was looked on somewhat
askance. "It's lucky," said a parishioner once, "that it has a
stone face." Would Lincoln go to the Unitarian church? Promptly at
service-time Mr. Fillmore appeared with his guest, the two historic
figures side by side in the pew. Two or three rows intervened between
it and that in which sat my mother and our household. I beheld the
scene only through the eyes of my kindred, for by that time I had
flown the nest. But I may be pardoned for noting here an interesting
spectacle. As they stood during the hymns, the contrast was
picturesque. Both men had risen from the rudest conditions through
much early hardship. Fillmore had been rocked in a sap-trough in a
log-cabin scarcely better than Lincoln's early shelter, and the two
might perhaps have played an even match at splitting rails. Fillmore,
however, strangely adaptive, had taken on a marked grace of manner,
his fine stature and mien carrying a dignified courtliness which is