of Columbia, though this power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said district."

This was Mr. Lincoln's mild position, then taken, and there he stood until military necessity compelled him, as the commander-in-chief of the Union army, to grant freedom to all the slaves.

The positions then taken by Douglas and Lincoln were argued by them through many years, and on many platforms, and their arguments had more to do in bringing the subject in a political form before the people than any other. They must be pronounced the foremost men in this battle of the giants.

It must be kept in mind that Mr. Lincoln had not yet entered his profession; was very poor; practicing, surveying, to earn his bread while studying law; that he walked to and from the legislature, a hundred miles each way, and yet had already become a central figure around which was soon to gather the moral and political forces of one of the greatest movements of the world. His strong common sense, becoming bright with the light of genius, won him favor wherever he was known, and fixed upon him the eyes of some as one who might develop great power.

He had long been in the habit of putting his thoughts into writing. He wrote much. This gave him the power of clear statement. His knowledge was limited, but what he knew, he knew well; and he thought and wrote about it, till it became a part of himself.

With all his joviality, he was a serious man, and studied profoundly the problems of life. "Oh! how hard it is to die and not be able to leave the world any better for one's little life in it," he said to a friend in his early manhood. In his seriousness, he was sometimes oppressed to melancholy. He often meditated upon the sad side of life, and groaned in spirit over the corruptions of the world. His own life was a profound study to him. Opening so obscurely and humbly, and coming on by such unpromising ways, hindered and oppressed, and set back and defeated so often, where was it leading to? He felt an inexpressible yearning for knowledge, usefulness and recognition;

Dat would he ever attain these? He was childlike in his simplicity and honesty He assumed nothing, but was always just himself and nothing else.

Mr. Lincoln, from his early youth, was religious in spirit. He had no professional or dogmatic religion, but was tenderly reverent toward the great Father of his spirit, and the souls of his children. His early bible study, his "angel mother's" reverent lessons, and Parson Elkin's influence, made impressions that he never lost. He adopted no creed, joined no church, yet respected all..

In his later readings he had fallen in with some works of science. He was much interested in geology. It brought him close to nature and nature's God. He studied human nature everywhere. Even when jovial he was studious, and through the apparently trifling side of his life, found avenues into serious reflections and reverent communings.

MR. LINCOLN A LAWYER.

In the autumn of 1836, Mr. Lincoln was admitted to the bar, having done nearly all his studying by himself, and having been a surveyor, and a legislator, and a general reader of politics and the news in the meantime. While studying, he had attended some courts, and familiarized himself a little with their proceedings. He received at once an invitation from Major Stuart to become his law partner in Springfield. Mr. Lincoln was already well known in Springfield, and honored for what he had done to make it the capital of the state. In April, 1837, he took up his abode there.

Mr. Lincoln was now well established in the principles in life to which he always adhered; was a genuine temperance man, openly and actively on the side of that great reform; was a politician of moderately reformatory tendencies; was a humane man, and profoundly sincere and honest.

He had had a curious and marked experience at New Salem. This rude country village had served him well as a place in which to get a start in life; and he now left it with many misgivings and questionings as to his future career.

The next July he was summoned to an extra session of the legislature, and very soon after Mr. Stuart was elected to Congress; so that their legal practice was somewhat interrupted. The next year he was re-elected to the legislature. At once he was recognized as the leading whig member, and he came within one vote of being made the speaker. The partisan aspects of the state had changed much. The result of Jackson's financial policy had, as the whigs said, brought the cruelly hard times of 1837, under which the country was yet suffering terribly; the gag-law in Congress, under Van Buren, which refused to consider all petitions and papers relating to slavery, was unpopular with all free-speech men, and the two together being domocratic measures, had weakened the democratic and strengthened the whig party. No business of great importance came before this legislature.

Mr. Lincoln's notoriety soon brought him legal business, which he attended to with the utmost fidelity. It was not long before he secured a great reputation as a case and jury lawyer. His good humor, fairness, his knowledge of jurors and persuasive power over them, and skill in managing cases, gave him an extensive business, so that in all the circuit of counties through which he practiced he was often on nearly all of the important cases.

In 1840 Mr. Lincoln was again elected to the legislature, and served because it was at home, but he refused longer to accept this office.

About this time a strange episode in Mr. Lincoln's life occurred, not at all creditable to his judgment or moral courage, according to our notions of these things. A poem appeared in the Sangamon "Journal" sharply reflecting on James Shields, a young lawyer of Springfield, afterward General Shields and United States senator. It was anonymous, but written by a young lady. Shields was fiercely angry about it, and must know the author or fight the editor, Simeon Francis. The young lady was a personal friend of Mr. Lincoln. Francis went to Lincoln for counsel. It was understood that somebody must fight a duel with the hot-blooded young Shields or be

branded as a coward. Lincoln told the editor that if the young man should again demand the author's name to tell him that he, Lincoln, held himself responsible for the poem. When Shields was told this he at once sent a challenge to Lincoln. It was accepted, and Lincoln chose broadswords as weapons, and put himself under training. The duel was to be on Bloody Island, in the Mississippi river; but friends interfered and prevented it, but its contemplation was a stain on both their reputations.

It has been charged upon Mr. Lincoln that he indulged in smutty stories unfit to be heard by chaste ears, and his biographers accept the charge as true, but explain it on two grounds: First, that it is common in the members of the legal profession, who in their business become familiar with the filth and smut of humanity; and second, that he told these stories because of their wit, and not because of their smut. They say he was intensely fond of wit, and had no sympathy with human filth. But no explanation atones for the blemish of such a practice. It is no part of a true man, and no matter who indulges in it, nor under what circumstances, it is not only a fault but a vicious practice. We can well understand how Mr. Lincoln had been familiar with such jokes and stories from his boyhood, by the society in which he had mingled, but that when he became a man he did not revolt against their use and discontinue them is against his taste and moral sensibility.

In 1840 Mr. Lincoln dissolved his partnership with Mr. Stuart, and formed one with Judge S. T. Logan, of Springfield. He now resolved to devote himself more to his profession, but each new political canvass called for his strong services.

In 1842 he married Miss Mary Todd, a daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky. Miss Todd had resided for some time at Springfield. They did not set up a new home at once, but boarded at the Globe Tavern. His private letters at this time indicate much pleasure in his new relation.

The next year he began to have Congressional aspirings, but his friend Baker got the ination, and he helped elect him.

Mr. Lincoln was a party man, and trained himself to keep step with his party. His ideal statesman was Henry Clay, and he was a close party man and went himself no farther in any direction than he could carry his party.

vass.

In 1844 Henry Clay was the whig candidate for the presidency. Mr. Lincoln supported him with his whole heart and power, speaking in many parts of Illinois and Indiana, and everywhere putting all his energy and enthusiasm into the canBut he was defeated, and great was Mr. Lincoln's chagrin and sorrow. It weakened his respect for the popular judgment. He had built up great hopes for the country on his party and his political idol, hopes not so well founded as he thought. Neither his party nor his idol had the merit he attributed to it. The whigs of the country were woefully disappointed. Mr. Clay had captivated many as he had Mr. Lincoln. Everywhere there was grief and disheartenment among the defeated partisans of the great Kentuckian.

In 1846 Mr. Lincoln went to Lexington, Kentucky, to hear Mr. Clay's speech on the gradual emancipation of the slaves. The speech was written and read. It disappointed him. It was cool and commonplace. The fire and force he had expected were not in it. The great orator and statesman were not manifest in the performance. He was introduced to Mr. Clay, who was cool and condescending, though he knew what a friend and helper he had in Mr. Lincoln. He invited Lincoln to his home at Ashland. It was such a gracious expression of friendship as was infinitely pleasing to our humble Illinois devotee of the great sage of Ashland. He went and was graciously entertained and patronized by the honored whig leader. But he came away a sad though a wiser man than when he went. Mr. Clay, while polite, polished and hospitable, was so conscious of his superiority, so condescending, as to make his guest painfully sensible of his common littleness. Mr. Clay was proud, princely, dignified; Mr. Lincoln was humble, plain, childlike; how could they affiliate? He felt that Mr. Clay was overbearing and domineering, not only to him, but to everybody. And so he saw his idol broken. It was a good lesson to the partisanship and idolatry