t been flattered. The others shook him by the hand and,
as they put on their overcoats, said: "Mr. Nott is going down town and
he will show you the way to the Astor House." Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Nott
started on foot, but the latter observing that Mr. Lincoln was
apparently Walking with some difficulty said, "Are you lame, Mr.
Lincoln?" He replied that he had on new boots and they hurt him. The two
gentlemen then boarded a street car. When they reached the place where
Mr. Nott would leave the car on his way home, he shook Mr. Lincoln by
the hand and, bidding him good-bye, told him that this car would carry
him to the side door of the Astor House. Mr. Lincoln went on alone, the
only occupant of the car. The next time he came to New York, he rode
down Broadway to the Astor House standing erect in an open barouche
drawn by four white horses. He bowed to the patriotic thousands in the
street, on the sidewalks, in the windows, on the house-tops, and they
cheered him as the lawfully elected President of the United States and
bade him go on and, with God's help, save the Union.

His companion in the street car has often wondered since then what Mr.
Lincoln thought about during the remainder of his ride that night to the
Astor House. The Cooper Institute had, owing to a snowstorm, not been
full, and its intelligent, respectable, non-partisan audience had not
rung out enthusiastic applause like a concourse of Western auditors
magnetised by their own enthusiasm. Had the address--the most carefully
prepared, the most elaborately investigated and demonstrated and
verified of all the work of his life--been a failure? But in the matter
of quality and ability, if not of quantity and enthusiasm, he had never
addressed such an audience; and some of the ablest men in the Northern
States had expressed their opinion of the address in terms which left no
doubt of the highest appreciation. Did Mr. Lincoln regard the address
which he had just delivered to a small and critical audience as a
success? Did he have the faintest glimmer of the brilliant effect which
was to follow? Did he feel the loneliness of the situation--the want of
his loyal Illinois adherents? Did his sinking heart infer that he was
but a speck of humanity to which the great city would never again give a
thought? He was a plain man, an ungainly man; unadorned, apparently
uncultivated, showing the awkwardness of self-conscious rusticity. His
dress that night before a New York audi