Just as Douglas emanated vitality--so much so that his aura filled the
whole Senate chamber and forced an unwilling response in the gifted but
hostile woman who watched him from the gallery--Lincoln, conversely,
made no such overpowering impression. His observers, however much they
have to say about his humor, his seasons of Shakespearian mirth, never
forget their impression that at heart he is sad. His fondness for poetry
in the minor key has become a byword, especially the line "Oh, why
should the spirit of mortal be proud."

It is impossible to discover any law governing the succession of his
lapses in self-reliance. But they may be related very plausibly to his
sense of failure or at least to his sense of futility. He was one of
those intensely sensitive natures to whom the futilities of this world
are its most discouraging feature. Whenever such ideas were brought home
to him his energy flagged; his vitality, never high, sank. He was prone
to turn away from the outward life to lose himself in the inner. All
this is part of the phenomena which Herndon perceived more clearly than
he comprehended it, which led him to call Lincoln a fatalist.

A humbler but perhaps more accurate explanation is the reminder that he
was son to Thomas the unstable. What happened in Lincoln's mind when
he returned defeated from Washington, that ghost-like rising of the
impulses of old Thomas, recurred more than once thereafter. In fact
there is a period well-defined, a span of thirteen years terminating
suddenly on a day in 1862, during which the ghost of old Thomas is a
thing to be reckoned with in his son's life. It came and went, most of
the time fortunately far on the horizon. But now and then it drew near.
Always it was lurking somewhere, waiting to seize upon him in those
moments when his vitality sank, when his energies were in the ebb, when
his thoughts were possessed by a sense of futility.