foot wrong — but there was one man at that table with as keen a nose for a faker as I have myself. How or when he saw through me I shall never understand, but he did, and gave me one of the many nasty moments in my life.
There were about a dozen at the dinner, and I didn't even notice him until the ladies had withdrawn, and Charterfield, our host, had invited me to regale the gentlemen with my adventures on the Slave Coast. But he seemed to take an even closer interest in my story than the others. He was an unusually tall man, with the ugliest face you ever saw, deep dark eye sockets and a chin like a coffin, and a black cow's lick of hair smeared across his forehead. When he spoke it was with the slow, deliberate drawl of the American back-countryman, which was explained by the fact that he was new to the capital; in fact, he was a very junior Congressman, invited at the last moment because he had some antislavery bill in preparation, and so would be interested in meeting me. His name will be familiar to you: Mr Lincoln.31
Let me say at once that in spite of all the trouble he caused me at various times, and the slight differences which may be detectable in our characters, I liked Abe Lincoln from the moment I first noticed him, leaning back in his chair with that hidden smile at the back of his eyes, gently cracking his knuckles. Just why I liked him I can't say; I suppose in his way he had the makings of as big a scoundrel as I am myself, but his appetites were different, and his talents infinitely greater. I can't think of him as a good man, yet as history measures these things I suppose he did great good. Not that that excites my admiration unduly, nor do I put my liking down to the fact that he had a sardonic humour akin to my own. I think I liked him because, for some reason which God alone knows, he liked me. And not many men who knew me as well as he did, have done that.
I remember only a few of his observations round that table. Once, when I was describing our fight with the Amazons, one of the company exclaimed:
'You mean to say the women fight and torture and slay on behalf of their menfolk? There can be no other country in the world where this happens.'
And Lincoln, very droll, inquires of him: 'Have you attended many political tea parties in Washington lately, sir?'
They all laughed, and the fellow replied that even in Washington society he hadn't seen anything quite to match what I had described.
'Be patient, sir,' says Lincoln. 'We're a young country, after all. Doubtless in time we will achieve a civilisation comparable with that of Day-homey.'
I spoke about Spring, and Charterfield expressed amazement and disgust that a man of such obvious parts should be so great a vfflain.
'Well, now,' says Lincoln, 'why not? Some of the greatest villains in history have been educated men. Without that education they might have been honest citizens. A few years at college won't make a bad man virtuous; it will merely put the polish on his wickedness.'
'Oh, come, now,' says Charterfield, 'that may be true, but you must admit that virtue more often goes hand in hand with learning than with ignorance. You know very well that a nation's criminal class is invariably composed of those who lack the benefits of education.'
'And being uneducated, they get caught,' says Lincoln. 'Your learned rascal usually goes undetected.'
'Why, at this rate, you will equate learning with evildoing,' cries someone. 'What must your view be of our leading justices and politicians? Are they not virtuous men?'
'Oh, virtuous enough,' says Lincoln. 'But what they would be like if they had been educated is another matter.'
When I had finished my tale, and had heard much congratulation and expressions of flattering astonishment, it was Lincoln who remarked that it must have been a taxing business to act my part among the slavers for so long. Had I not found it a great burden? I said it had been, but fortunately I was a good dissembler.
'You must be,' says he. 'And I speak as a politician, who knows how difficult it is to fool people.'
'Well,' says I, 'my own experience is that you can fool some people all the time — and all the people some times. But I concede that it's difficult to fool all the people all the time.'
'That is so,' says he, and that great grin lit up his ugly face. 'Yes, sir, Mr Comber, that is indeed so.'
I also carried away from that table an impression of Mr Lincoln's views on slaves and slavery which must seem strange in the twentieth century since it varies somewhat from popular belief. I recall, for example, that at one point he described the negroes as 'the most confounded nuisance on this continent, not excepting the Democrats'.
'Oh, come,' says someone, 'that is a little hard. It is not their fault.'
'It was not my fault when I caught the chicken pox,' says Lincoln, 'but I can assure you that while I was infected I was a most unconscionable nuisance-although I believe my family loved me as dearly as ever.'
'Come, that's better,' laughs the other. 'You may call the nigras a nuisance provided you love them, too — that will satisfy even the sternest abolitionist.'
'Yes, I believe it would,' says Lincoln. 'And like so many satisfactory political statements, it would not be true. I try to love my fellow man, with varying success, the poor slaves among the rest. But the truth is I neither like nor dislike them more than any other creatures. Now your stern abolitionist, because he detests slavery, feels he must love its victims, and so he insists on detecting in them qualities deserving unusual love. But in fact those qualities are not to be found in them, any more than in other people. Your extreme anti-slaver mistakes compassion for love, and this leads him into a kind of nigra-worship which, on a rational examination, is by no means justified.'
'Surely the victim of a misfortune as grievous as slavery does deserve special consideration, though.'
'Indeed,' says Lincoln, 'special consideration, special compassion, by all means, just such as I received when I had the chicken pox. But having the chicken pox did not make me a worthier or better person, as some people seem to suppose is the case with victims of slavery. I tell you, sir, to listen to some of our friends, I could believe that every plantation and barracoon from Florida to the river is peopled by the disciples of Jesus. Reason tells me this is false; the slave being God's creature and a human soul, is no better than the rest of us. But if I said as much to Cassius Clay32 he would try to prove me wrong at the point of his bowie knife.'
'You have worked too long on your anti-slavery bill,' laughs Charterfield. 'You are suffering from a surfeit.'
'Why, sir, that is probably so,' says Lincoln. 'I wish I had ten dollars for every time I have fought a client's case, never doubting its justice and rightness, pursuing it to a successful verdict with all my powers — and finished the trial feeling heartily sick with that same worthy client. I would not confess it outside this room, but you may believe me, gentlemen, there are moments, God forgive me, when I become just a little tired of nigras.'
'Your conscience is troubling you,' says someone.
'By thunder, there is no lack of people determined to make my conscience trouble me,' says Lincoln. 'As though I can't tend to my own conscience, they must forever be running pins into it. There was a gentleman the other day, a worthy man, too, and I was ill-advised enough to say to him much what I've said tonight: that nigras, while deserving our uttermost compassion and assistance, were nevertheless, a nuisance. I said they were the rock on which our nation had been splitting for years, and that they could well assume the proportions of a national catastrophe — through no fault of their own, of course. I believe I concluded by wishing the whole parcel of them back in Africa. He was shocked: 'Strange talk, this', says he, 'from the sponsor of a bill against slavery'. 'I'd sponsor a bill to improve bad drains', says I. 'They're a confounded nuisance, too.' A thoughtless remark, no doubt, and a faulty analogy, but I paid for it. 'Good God,' cries he, 'you'll not compare human souls with bad drains, surely.' 'Not invariably,' says I, but I got no further, because he stalked off in a rage, having misunderstood me completely.'
'You can hardly blame him,' says the other, smiling.
'No,' says Lincoln. 'He was a man of principle and conscience. His only fault lay in his inability to perceive that I have both commodities also, but I didn't buy mine ready-made from Cincinnati, and I don't permit either to blind me to reality, I hope. And that reality is that the slave question is much too serious a matter for emotion, yet I very much fear that emotion will override reason in its settlement. In the meantime, I pray to God I am wrong, and continue to fight it in my own way, which I believe to be as worthy as polemical journalism and the underground railroad.'
After that the talk turned to the great California gold strike that I had first heard of at Roatan, and which was obsessing everyone. The first rumours had spoken of fabulous wealth for the taking; then word had spread that the
