Speaking of his own poetry he called himself "a sadder singer, full of doubt and misgiving." Nothing on earth could be to him what it used to be before his daughter died. Yet he would not give up his work, nor go mourning silent all his days. The best that he would have men say of his writing was that it was true to what he thought and felt when he wrote it. Whatever there was of misery and trouble and evil in the world, still courage and patience, labor and fellowship were good-good in themselves and good in their results. Justice was what we ought to work for, but meantime most of us must confess that we needed charity-authors not exempt, -nor preachers! A man ought to think more of what he belongs to than of what belongs to him. When we see something queer in others, it should be a kind of a looking-glass. The best hope we can have is that God smiles at us as we do at our small children. The things we toil for on earth are not vain-they are real enough, some of them, but all transient, and some day, perhaps, we shall look back at them as not very different from these bundles of mushrooms we have been gathering. "I see," he added, with a whimsical smile, "my bundle is a little larger than yours. But that is only because my handkerchief is bigger. Besides, we are going to divide them equally when we get home."

I still see him with that wistful smile on his lips and around the corners of his eyes, and hear his soft, slightly hesitant voice as he says good-by at the door of his cottage.

HENRY WATTERSON

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Address by Henry Watterson, journalist and orator, editor of the Louisville, Ky., Courier-Journal (born in Washington, D. C., 1840; died, 1921), delivered as an oration before the Lincoln Club of Chicago, February 12, 1895, and subsequently repeated on many platforms as a lecture. It has been heard in all parts of the country, but nowhere, as has been stated, with livelier demonstrations of approval than in the cities of the South "from Richmond and Charleston to New Orleans and Galveston." The text here given includes a passage added to the matter as originally spoken, relating to the Hampton Roads Conference. This presents Mr. Watterson's proof for the assertion as to what had actually passed between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stephens on that occasion, which had been questioned. Other speeches by Mr. Watterson are given in Volume III.

THE statesmen in knee-breeches and powdered wigs who signed the Declaration of Independence and framed the Constitution-the soldiers in blue-and-buff, top-boots and epaulets who led the armies of the Revolution-were what we are wont to describe as gentlemen. They were English gentlemen. They were not all, nor even generally, scions of the British aristocracy; but they came, for the most part, of good Anglo-Saxon and Scotch-Irish stock.

The shoe-buckle and the ruffled shirt worked a spell peculiarly their own. They carried with them an air of polish and authority. Hamilton, though of obscure birth and small stature, is represented by those who knew him to have been dignity and grace personified; and old Ben Franklin, even in woolen hose, and none too courtier-like, was the delight of the great nobles and fine ladies, in whose company he made himself as Copyright, 1899, by Courier-Journal Job-Printing Co. Published by permission.

much at home as though he had been born a marquis. When we revert to that epoch the beauty of the scene which history unfolds is marred by little that is uncouth, by nothing that is grotesque. The long procession passes, and we see in each group, in every figure, something of heroic proportion. John Adams and John Hancock, Samuel Warren and Samuel Adams, the Livingstons in New York, the Carrolls in Maryland, the Masons, the Randolphs and the Pendletons in Virginia, the Rutledges in South Carolina-what pride of caste, what elegance of manner, what dignity and dominancy of character! And the soldiers! Israel Putnam and Nathanael Greene, Ethan Allen and John Stark, Mad Anthony Wayne and Light Horse Harry Lee, and Morgan and Marion and Sumter, gathered about the immortal Washington-Puritan and Cavalier so mixed and blended as to be indistinguishable the one from the other-where shall we go to seek a more resplendent galaxy of field marshals? Surely not to Blenheim, drinking beakers to Marlborough after the famous victory; nor yet to the silken market of the great Condé on the Rhine, bedizened with gold lace and radiant with the flower of the nobility of France! Ah, me! there were gentlemen in those days; and they made their influence felt upon life and thought long after the echoes of Bunker Hill and Yorktown had faded away, long after the bell over Independence Hall had ceased to ring.

The first half of the Republic's first half century of existence, the public men of America, distinguished for many things, were chiefly and almost universally distinguished for repose of bearing and sobriety of behavior. It was not until the institution of African slavery had got into politics as a vital force that Congress became a bear-garden, and that our law-makers, laying aside their manners with their small-clothes, fell into the loose-fitting habiliments of modern fashion and the slovenly jargon of partisan controversy. The gentlemen who signed the Declaration and framed the Constitution were succeeded by gentlemen-much like themselves-but these were succeeded by a race of party leaders much less decorous and much more self-confident; rugged, puissant; deeply moved in all that they said and did, and sometimes turbulent; so that finally, when

the volcano burst forth flames that reached the heavens, great human boulders appeared amid the glare on every side; none of them much to speak of according to rules regnant at St. James and Versailles; but vigorous, able men, full of their mission and of themselves, and pulling for dear life in opposite directions.

There were Seward and Sumner and Chase, Corwin and Ben Wade, Trumbull and Fessenden, Hale and Collomer and Grimes, and Wendell Phillips, and Horace Greeley, our latterday Franklin. There were Toombs and Hammond, and Slidell and Wigfall, and the two little giants Douglas and Stephens, and Yancey and Mason, and Jefferson Davis. With them soft words buttered no parsnips, and they cared little how many pitchers might be broken by rude ones. The issue between them did not require a diagram to explain it. It was so simple a child might understand. It read, human slavery against human freedom, slave labor against free labor, and involved a conflict as inevitable as it was irrepressible.

Long before the guns of Beauregard opened fire upon Fort Sumter, and, fulfilling the program of extremism, "blood was sprinkled in the faces of the people," the hustings in America had become a battle-ground, and every rod of debatable territory a ring for controversial mills, always tumultuous, and sometimes sanguinary. No sooner had the camp-fires of the Revolution-which warmed so many noble hearts and lighted so many patriotic lamps-no sooner had the camp-fires of the Revolution died out, than there began to burn, at first fitfully, then to blaze alarmingly in every direction, a succession of forest fires, baffling the energies and resources of the good and brave men who sought to put them out. Mr. Webster, at once a learned jurist and a prose poet, might thunder expositions of the written law, to quiet the fears of the slave-owner and to lull the waves of agitation. Mr. Clay, by his resistless eloquence and overmastering personality, might compromise first one and then another of the irreconcilable conditions that obstructed the pathway of conservative statesmanship. To no purpose, except to delay the fatal hour.

There were moving to the foreground moral forces which would down at no man's bidding. The still, small voice of

emancipation, stifled for a moment by self-interest playing upon the fears of the timid, recovered its breath, and broke into a cry for abolition. The cry for abolition rose in volume to a roar. Slowly, step by step, the forces of freedom advanced to meet the forces of slavery. Gradually, these mighty, discordant elements approached the predestined line of battle; the gains for awhile seeming to be in doubt, but in reality all on one side. There was less and less of middle ground. The middle men who ventured to get in the way were either struck down or absorbed by the one party or the other. The Senate had its Gettysburg; and many and many a Shiloh was fought on the floor of the House. Actual war raged in Kansas. The mysterious descent upon Harper's Ferry, like a fire-bell in the night, might have warned all men of the coming conflagration; might have revealed to all men a prophecy in the lines that, quoted to describe the scene, foretold the event

The rock-ribbed ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,
And Echo there, whatever is asked her, answers:

"Death."

Greek was meeting Greek at last; and the field of politics became almost as sulphurous and murky as an actual field of battle.

Amid the noise and confusion, the clashing of intellects like sabers bright, and the booming of the big oratorical guns of the North and the South, now definitely arrayed, there came one day into the Northern camp one of the oddest figures imaginable; the figure of a man who, in spite of an appearance somewhat at outs with Hogarth's line of beauty, wore a serious aspect, if not an air of command, and, pausing to utter a single sentence that might be heard above the din, passed on and for a moment disappeared. The sentence was pregnant with meaning. The man bore a commission from God on high! He said. "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half free and half slave. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided." He was Abraham Lincoln. [Applause.]

How shall I describe him to you? Shall I do so as he appeared to me, when I first saw him immediately on his ar