He worked hard to develop a simple, compact style of speaking and writing, with short, clear sentences that could be “understood by all classes.”

“They say I tell a great many stories,” Lincoln told a friend. “I reckon I do; but I have learned from long experience that plain people, take them as they run, are more easily influenced through the medium of a broad and humorous illustration than any other way.”

explaining to Howe that if he were elected someday, these people would be his “bosses,” and “they’ve got a right to know what they’re hiring.”

Both Lincoln’s storytelling and his humor, friends believed, were “necessary to his very existence”; they were intended “to whistle off sadness.”

Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.

In time, however, the steadfast affectation of good cheer begot real cheer.

He was simply paying close attention, absorbing, readying to act as soon as he had accumulated sufficient knowledge to do so.

“Sometimes that instinct is better than a long and careful investigation.”

Abigail Adams wrote to her son John Quincy Adams in the midst of the American Revolution, suggesting that “the habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.”