such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."

The greatest compliment, because the most deliberate, was that of the
committee who prepared the speech for general distribution. Their
preface is sufficiently explicit:

"No one who has not actually attempted to verify its details can
understand the patient research and historical labors which it
embodies. The history of our earlier politics is scattered through
numerous journals, statutes, pamphlets, and letters; and these are
defective in completeness and accuracy of statement, and in indices and
tables of contents. Neither can any one who has not traveled over this
precise ground appreciate the accuracy of every trivial detail, or the
self-denying impartiality with which Mr. Lincoln has turned from the
testimony of 'the fathers' on the general question of slavery, to
present the single question which he discusses. From the first line to
the last, from his premises to his conclusion, he travels with a swift,
unerring directness which no logician ever excelled, an argument
complete and full, without the affectation of learning, and without the
stiffness which usually accompanies dates and details. A single, easy,
simple sentence of plain Anglo-Saxon words, contains a chapter of
history that, in some instances, has taken days of labor to verify, and
which must have cost the author months of investigation to acquire."

Surely Mr. Bryant and Mr. Beecher and the rest had every reason for
gratification that they had introduced this man of humble beginnings to
so brilliant a New York audience.

Lincoln went to Exeter, N.H., to visit his son who was in Phillips
Academy preparing for Harvard College. Both going and returning he made