Our President

He is a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla, in respect of outside polish (for example, he uses "humans" as English for homines), but a most sensible, straightforward, honest old codger.  The best President we have had since old Jackson's time, at least, as I believe; for Zachary Taylor's few days of official life can hardly be counted as a presidential term.  His evident integrity and simplicity of purpose would compensate for worse grammar than his, and for even more intense provincialism and rusticity.

 --New York City Lawyer George Templeton Strong indulges, patronizes and distracts his new president, Abraham Lincoln, 150 years ago today.  From his diary, edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, abridged by Thomas J. Pressly 195 (1952). The "old codger" would have been 52; Strong was 11 years younger.