It would have been as easy to hold a globule of mercury under the finger's tip as to fasten him to a point he desired to evade.

He could almost invert a proposition by a plausible paraphrase.

He delighted in enlarging an opponent's assertion to a forced inference ridiculous in form and monstrous in dimensions.

In spirit he was alert, combative, aggressive; in manner, patronizing and arrogant by turns.
Lincoln's mental equipment was of an entirely different order.

His principal weapon was direct, unswerving logic.