Lincoln then told me a story about James G. Blaine when the latter was first elected to Congress. Blaine afterward repudiated this story, but it serves to illustrate Lincoln's thought none the less. He said that Blaine hired a private secretary to help him out in remembering people. His system was to have the secretary meet all those who entered the reception room and ask their names, where they lived, what families they belonged to, and all the information that could be gained about them in a social way. Then, according to the story, the secretary ran around to the back door to Mr. Blaine's private office and gave him a full memorandum about his callers. A few minutes later, when the visitor was ushered in, the secretary told him to "walk right in to see Mr. Blaine."
He would say in the most casual manner: "Mr. Blaine is in there. You can go right in."
Mr. Blaine would get up, shake hands with the man, ask him how his relations were, how long it had been since he was in the legislature, whether his wife's brother had been successful in the West, etc., until the visitor came to be perfectly astounded.
As a result of this Mr. Blaine became very famous for his memory of names. But even if the story about the source of Blaine's "memory" is untrue, Lincoln was probably ahead of him and, indeed, of any man in this country; he could remember every person he had ever seen in twenty years' time. That was one of the things that became evident when I asked him how he could judge the visitors. In the majority of cases he had seen the man or heard of him in some connection, perhaps years before. He also said that he judged strangers by their names because when he heard their names he would think of other people he did know by that name, and he judged they might belong to that family and have the same traits.
He admitted that he was sometimes guided by the suggestion of Artemus Ward, who told him a story of a boys' club in Boston which did not take in any members who were not Irish. A boy came along and asked to be admitted to the club, and the members asked, "Are you Irish?"
Lincoln, smiling, said, "The Irish boys kicked that boy out forthwith."
He said, "Artemus Ward, when telling me that story, confirmed me in my view that a name _does_ have something to do with the man. But," Lincoln added, "if it is Smith, I have no way of getting at it." Then he said, more seriously, that he had to be guided a great deal by an instinctive impression of the visitor as he came in the door.