tion, I inquired, "Are you happy?" To this he replied, that he was somewhat in the condition of a very profane youth who had just got religion at a backwoods camp-meeting. Soon after his conversion, the preacher, taking him affectionately by the hand, inquired: "My young friend, are you very happy?" "Well, parson," replied the only halfconverted youth, "I am not damn happy, just happy, that's all." His only brother was for many years a Representative in Congress from Illinois. Clark Ingersoll was himself able and eloquent, but overshadowed by the superior gifts of his younger brother, the subject of this sketch. The death of the former was to Colonel Ingersoll a sorrow which remained with him to the last. The funeral occurred in Washington in the summer of 1879, and of the pall-bearers selected by Colonel Ingersoll for the last sad service to his brother, were men well known in public life, one of whom but two years later, while President of the United States, fell by the hand of an assassin. From a Washington paper of the day succeeding the funeral of Clark Ingersoll, the following is taken: “When Colonel Ingersoll ceased speaking the pall-bearers, Senator Allison, Senator David Davis, Senator Blaine, Senator Voorhees, Representatives Garfield of Ohio, Morrison, Boyd, and Stevenson of Illinois, bore the casket to the hearse and the lengthy cortège proceeded to the Oak Hill Cemetery where the remains were interred." The occasion was one that will not easily pass from my memory. There was no service whatever save the funeral oration which has found its way into all languages. I stood by the side of Colonel Ingersoll near the casket during its delivery, and vividly recall his deep emotion, and the faltering tones in which the wondrous sentences were uttered. It is probable that this oration has no counterpart in literature. It seemed in very truth the knell of hope, the expression of a grief that could know no surcease, the agony of a parting that could know no morrow. In such an hour how cheerless and comfortless these words: "Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. “Every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love, and every moment jewelled with a joy, will at its close become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death." And yet in those other words, "But in the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing," and, "while on his forehead fell the golden dawning of a grander day," there is a yearning for "the touch of a vanished hand," and a hope that no philosophy could dispel of a reunion sometime and somewhere with the loved and lost. Two decades later, again "the veiled shadow stole upon the scene," and the sublime mystery of life and death was revealed. The awful question, "If a man die shall he live again?" was answered, and to the great agnostic all was known. XVII A CAMP-MEETING ORATOR - PETER CARTWRIGHT, METHODIST PREACHER HIS FEARLESSNESS AND ENERGY HIS OLD-FASHIONED ORTHODOXY HOW HE CONVERTED A PROFANE SWEARER HIS ATTENDANCE AT A BALL OLD-TIME CAMP-MEETINGS - - CARTWRIGHT'S AVERSION TO OTHER SECTS - - CONVERSION OF A DESPERADO INTO A PENITENT CARTWRIGHT MR. LINCOLN'S COMPETITOR FOR REPRESENTATIVE HIS SPEECH AT A DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION. TH HE Rev. Peter Cartwright was a noted Methodist preacher of pioneer days in Central Illinois. Once seen, he was a man never to be forgotten. He was, in the most expressive sense of the words, sui generis; a veritable product of the times in which he lived, and the conditions under which he moved and had his being. All in all, his like will not appear again. He was converted when a mere youth at a camp-meeting in southern Kentucky; soon after, he was licensed to preach, and became a circuit rider in that State, and later was of the Methodist vanguard to Illinois. It was said of him that he was of the church military as well as "the church militant." He was of massive build, an utter stranger to fear, and of unquestioned honesty and sincerity. He was gifted with an eloquence adapted to the times in which he lived, and the congregations to which he preached. There would be no place for him now, for the untutored assemblages who listened with bated breath to his fiery appeals are of the past. "For, welladay! Their day is fled, Old times are changed, old manners gone." The narrative of his tough conflicts with the emissaries of Satan is even now of the rarest reading for a summer's day or a winter's night. How he fought the Indians, fought the robbers, swam rivers, and threaded the prairies, in order that |