No rebuff could crush for a moment the selfreliant spirit of the man; but his resolution to apply himself more closely and studiously to the law was at once overruled by events, calling him to still higher and heavier duties, for which his whole life had been fitting him.

Although the bar, of which he was the unchallenged leader, could not boast great learning, it numbered many able men-men like himself, who knew more of practice than of theory. In a new land, without traditions, they had been thrown upon their own resources. Innocent of precedents and decisions, they had been obliged to blaze a path and break the soil for justice. Their task, if it did not make them finished lawyers, at least bred a company of strong, original men, who, when opportunity knocked at the doors of their village law offices, showed they were equally ready to lead in the council of the nation or to command on the field of battle.

HOME AND NEIGHBORS

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The two Lincolns: one the simple, homely, familiar neighbor; the other the solitary, moody idealist and prophet, whom no man knew.—Without kindred around him and without confidants. - His home life. Mrs. Lincoln's social trials on his account. Etiquette a closed book to him. His knightly devotion and tender sympathy. His relations with his boys. - Not a reader. Fond of sad songs. His real law office - His orderly mind and faithful memory. - How he divided fees with his partner. His famous defence of Jack Armstrong's son in a murder trial in May, 1858.

in his hat.

LINCOLN went through the world alone.

There seem, indeed, to have been two Lincolns. The friends who knew him best saw hardly more than the plain, simple, practical man, who milked his cow, bedded his horse, and went to market with his basket on his arm, giving a cheery "howdy" to every one he met on the way, or who sat on a box at the foot of his office stairs and told stories to a group of street loiterers.

They beheld another Lincoln, from time to time as he walked the street, completely wrapped in solitude, or as he sat brooding in his office by the hour and far into the night. His closest associates have confessed they seldom caught a glimpse of the

inner Lincoln, the poet, the dreamer, the idealist, the prophet who pondered within the outer Lincoln and guided him on to his destiny.

Whatever the sorrows of the man, whatever his hopes, he told them to no one, asked no one to share them. Not one of his kindred came forth from the lowly obscurity in which he was born to keep him company on the high road to fame. Without a mother, a brother, or a sister, he knew little or nothing of his race, save an illiterate father, who lived to see but not to understand the promise of his son's distinction.

He had no chums in boyhood, and in manhood no confidants. He and his wife loyally kept their mutual vows, but they were held apart somewhat by nature and training. Mrs. Lincoln was her husband's most generous admirer and sincere adviser, watching his political advancement with eager pride, for, like a woman of the old South, she was an ardent politician. Her delicate nervous system, however, was easily unstrung by family cares.

Lincoln's innocence of social standards, so important in her eyes, jarred upon her at times. She felt competent to make their home a center, befitting, as she felt, the honor in which he was held. He good-naturedly, if awkwardly, endured the ceremonials of the little capital city, going with

her to the "grand fêtes," which she flatteringly pictured in her letters to Kentucky friends. Moreover, they gave parties of their own, one of which she could boast was attended by three hundred persons.

Careful as Lincoln was of the feelings of others, he offended, without knowing, his wife's sense of propriety, for etiquette remained always a closed book to him. At the table he might forget there was a special knife for the butter, or, if the bell rang, not wait for the busy "hired girl" to answer it, but, rising from his favorite position on the floor, himself go in his slippers and shirt sleeves to welcome, perchance, some ladies who had come to make a fashionable call.

All others in Springfield could more readily forgive their distinguished townsman his little lapses of this kind than could his proud and sensitive wife. Even the picture of her unhappiness easily might be overdrawn, for Lincoln's lack of the small graces of life was outweighed many times by his knightly honor, his patient devotion, as well as by the silent sympathy with which he bore her nerve storms.

He delighted to carry his boys on his back and to take one of them by the hand when he went down town. Their turmoil never disturbed him. The mischief-making of youth only amused him; he never

viewed it with alarm. "Since I began this letter," he wrote to a friend, "a messenger came to tell me that Bob was lost; but by the time I reached the house, his mother had found him and had him whipped, and by now, very likely he is run away again.”

When this same Bob was bitten by a dog, his anxious and always superstitious father dropped everything and took him to Indiana that a wonderful madstone in that state might be applied to the wound. The boys could go to his office and pull down the law books, scatter legal documents over the floor, and bend the points of the pens without ruffling his temper, however much they annoyed his partner.

For Lincoln, the office was merely a shelter and a lounging place, with a chair to sit on and a sofa worn by use to fit his reclining body. His mind was orderly in a remarkable degree. His thought was clear and straight. He always knew just where to find anything in the carefully arranged compartments of his well-stocked head. His memory was most trustworthy. He made no notes in preparing his cases. A desk was a good enough foot-rest for him, but that was all. He would rather write on his knee, while his hat was sufficiently large to accommodate his letters and the memoranda of his thoughts, which he made from time to time on bits of paper.