wagged us into international complications, and there is a war-time
anecdote, which I have never seen in print and I believe is
unhackneyed, which casts a light. A general of the army, talking with
Lincoln and the Cabinet, did not spare his oaths. "What church do you
attend?" interposed the President at last, stroking his chin in his
innocent way. Confused at an inquiry so foreign to the topic under
discussion, the soldier replied he did not attend much of any church
himself, but his folks were Methodists. "How odd!" said. Lincoln,
"I thought you were an Episcopalian. You swear just like Seward, and
Seward is an Episcopalian."

But I should be sorry to believe there was any trouble with Seward but
a surface blemish. Though in '61 he advocated a foreign war as a
means for bringing together North and South, and desired to shelve
practically Lincoln while he himself stood at the front to manage the
turmoil, he made no more mistakes than statesmen in general. He had
been powerful for good before the war, and during its course, with
what virile stiffness of the upper lip did he face and foil the
frowning foreign world! He had the insight and candour to do full
justice at last to Lincoln, whom at first he depreciated. Then the
purchase of Alaska! Writing as I do on the western coast I am perhaps
affected by the glamour of that marvellous land. When news of the
bargain came in the seventies, the scorners sang:

"Hear it all ye polar bears,
Waltz around the pole in pairs.
All ye icebergs make salaam,
You belong to Uncle Sam.
Lo, upon the snow too plain
Falls his dark tobacco stain."