Senators and Representatives on a social occasion when he had
returned to Congress in his old age, against seeking to acquire
the reputation of humorists. He said it was the mistake of his
life. He loved it as did his hearers, but the temptation to be
humorous was always uppermost, and while his speech on the
Mexican War was the greatest ever delivered in the Senate,
excepting Webster's reply to Hayne, he regretted that he was more
known as a humorist than as a statesman.

His first great achievement in the House was delivered in 1840 in
reply to General Crary, of Michigan, who had attacked General
Harrison's military career. Corwin's reply in defense of Harrison
is universally accepted as the most brilliant combination of
humor and invective ever delivered in that body. The venerable
John Quincy Adams a day or two after Corwin's speech, referred to
Crary as "the late General Crary," and the justice of the remark
from the "Old Man Eloquent" was accepted by all. Mr. Lincoln
differed from the celebrated humorists of the country in the
important fact that his humor was unstudied. He was not in any
sense a professional humorist, but I have never in all my
intercourse with public men, known one who was so apt in humorous
illustration us Mr. Lincoln, and I have known him many times to
silence controversy by a humorous story with pointed application
to the issue.

His face was the saddest in repose that I have ever seen among
accomplished and intellectual men, and his sympathies for the
people, for the untold thousands who were suffering bereavement
from the war, often made him speak with his heart upon his
sleeve, about the sorrows which shadowed the homes of the land