Note 66 — Chapter XXII

"By reference to Mr. Lincoln's early political and literary performances it will appear that he was more than usually addicted to a florid style, and to greatly exaggerated figures of speech; that the plain, direct, homely, common-sense methods of his later and statesmanlike years were wholly wanting. Rhodomontade was as common in those youthful productions as plain assertion was in his mature life. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, in the years of his adolescence, he is credited with very decided opinions, radical views, and florid expressions on the subject of religion; but he was forty-five years of age when I first knew him, and his views either underwent a change or else he had grown reticent on that great subject. Certain it is that I never heard Lincoln express himself on the subject of religion at all." Whitney: Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 268.