cuse me. I must be in
Tennessee at a given time." "But we can't excuse you," said the
President. "Mrs. Lincoln's dinner without you would be Hamlet with
Hamlet left out." "I appreciate the honor Mrs. Lincoln would do me,"
said the General, "but time is very important now. I ought to be at the
front, and a dinner to me means a million dollars a day lost to the
country." Lincoln was pleased with this answer, and said cheerfully,
"Well, we'll have the dinner without you."

After Lincoln's first meeting with General Grant he was asked regarding
his personal impressions of the new commander. He replied, "Well, I
hardly know what to think of him. He's the quietest little fellow you
ever saw. He makes the least fuss of any man I ever knew. I believe on
several occasions he has been in this room a minute or so before I knew
he was here. It's about so all around. The only evidence you have that
he's in any particular place is that he makes things move." To a
subsequent inquiry as to his estimate of Grant's military capacities,
Lincoln responded, with emphasis: "Grant is the first General I've had.
_He's a General_." "How do you mean, Mr. Lincoln?" his visitor asked.
"Well, I'll tell you what I mean," replied Lincoln. "You know how it's
been with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the army,
he'd come to me with the plan of a campaign, and about as much as to
say: 'Now I don't believe I can do it, but if you say so I'll try it
on,' and so put the responsibility of success or failure on me. They all
wanted _me_ to be the General. Now, it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't
told me what his plans are. I don't know and I don't want to know. I am
glad to find a man who can go ahead without me. When any of the rest set
out on a campaign they'd look over matters and pick out some one thing
they were short of and they knew I couldn't give them, and tell me they
couldn't hope to win unless they had it--and it was most generally
cavalry. Now when Grant took hold I was waiting to see what his pet
impossibility would be, and I reckoned it would be cavalry, of course,
for we hadn't horses enough to mount what men we had. There were fifteen
thousand men, or thereabouts, up near Harper's Ferry, and no horses to
put them on. Well, the other day Grant sent to me about these very men,
just as I expected; but what he wanted to know was whether he could make
infantry of 'em or disband 'em. He doesn't ask impossibilities of me,
and he's th