What is most needed now is wise statesmanship, and the first quality of a statesman is _prescience_.

In my position here, as head of the Smithsonian, I cannot be a partisan! I did not vote the Republican ticket, but I am confident that by a long way the most far-seeing head in this land is on the shoulders of that awkward rail-splitter from Illinois." Every syllable of Professor Henry's prognostication proved true, and nothing more true than his estimate of Lincoln at a time when there was too much disposition to distrust him.
As I have had for many years what my friends have playfully called "Lincoln on the brain," let me say a few words in regard to the most marvellous man that this country has produced in the nineteenth century.
His name is to-day a household word in every civilized land.

Dr.Newman Hall, of London, has told me that when he had addressed a listless audience, he found that nothing was so certain to arouse them as to introduce the name of Abraham Lincoln.

Certainly no other name has such electric power over every true heart from Maine to Mexico.

The first time I ever saw the man whom we used to call, familiarly and affectionately, "Uncle Abe," was at the Tremont House in Chicago, a few days after his election to the presidency.