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of the army, and intimate friends, I cannot recollect to have heard him relate a circumstance to any one of them, which would have been out of place uttered in a ladies' drawing-room.
And this testimony is not unsupported by that of others, well entitled to consideration.
Dr. Stone, his family physician, came in one day to see my studies.
Sitting in front of that of the President,--with whom he did not sympathize politically,--he remarked, with much feeling, “It is the province of a physician to probe deeply the interior lives of men; and I affirm that Mr. Lincoln is the purest hearted man with whom I ever came in contact.”
Secretary Seward, who of the Cabinet officers was probably most intimate with the President, expressed the same sentiment in still stronger language.
He once said to the Rev. Dr. Bellows: “Mr. Lincoln is the best man I ever knew!”
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