as he walked up and down the aisles, between the members' seats, talking and gesticulating with those huge arms and hands of his, the whole speech a marvellous web of drollery, wit, shrewd party appeals, pitiless analysis, caricature, satire, and outrageous illustration. He ridiculed the military pretensions of the Democratic candidate, comparing them with his own as a mosquito-bitten Captain in the days of the Black Hawk War, when "I fought, bled, and-came away."

The most characteristic passages will hardly bear the critical light which falls upon the printed page, yet their unrestrained grotesque humour so accurately reflects one aspect of their speaker's character that a specimen cannot be omitted. In reply to an accusation of military hero-worship, Lincoln described the attitude of the Democratic party still clinging to the coat-tail of its great general, Jackson. "Now, Sir," quoth Lincoln, "you dare not give it up. Like a horde of hungry ticks you have stuck to the tail of the Hermitage Lion to the end of his life; and you are still sticking to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it after he is dead." Then he lapsed into burlesque anecdote. "A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has General Jackson's popularity been to you. You not only twice made President of him out of it, but you have had enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since;1 and it is your chief reliance now to make still another."

1 Referring to Van Buren and Polk.

After the close of the session, he continued the electoral campaign with ardour, first in the East, and afterwards in his own State. He was thus described at the time by one who saw him at a meeting in one of the Massachusetts country towns. "He seemed uneasy and out of sympathy with his surroundings. But at last he arose to speak, and almost instantly there was a change. His indifferent manner vanished as soon as he opened his mouth. He went right to work. He wore a black alpaca sack [coat]; and he turned up the sleeves of this, and then the cuffs of his shirt. Next he loosened his neck-tie, and soon after he took it off altogether. All the time he was gaining upon his audience. He soon had it as by a spell. I never saw men more delighted. His style was the most familiar and off-hand possible. His eye had lighted up and changed the whole expression of his countenance. He began to bubble out with humour. There was no attempt at eloquence or finish of style, but for plain pungency of humour it would have been difficult to surpass his speech." The speaker's immediate object was evidently accomplished. Taylor's candidature was not one to arouse great moral enthusiasm, but it was popular and, in his view, worth supporting. When his hearer declares he never saw men more delighted, he bears testimony to the speaker's power of accomplishing his purpose.

But the real springs of Lincoln's power, when it was fully manifested, lay in his moral fervour and his sense of justice; and his tour in the East was not without important effects upon this deeper side of his political consciousness. Taken in conjunction with

the intimacy he had formed in Washington with Joshua Giddings, one of the ablest leaders of the Abolition movement in the West, it probably brought him to a new political standpoint with regard to the question of slavery. The popular attitude towards it. in Illinois was, indeed, far different from that which prevailed in many parts of the Eastern States; and when, in Boston, he heard Governor Steward's great oration, he was deeply moved. After his own speech, which followed the Governor's, Lincoln had a conversation with the latter in which he said: "I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give much more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing."

His main effort in the Eastern States had been to recall the anti-slavery Whigs, who had joined the Free-Soil Party, to their old allegiance. He argued with them, as with the Liberty-men of 1844, that the orthodox Whigs were far more effectively opposing the extension of slave territory than were they. But, strong party man though he remained, he must have been impressed by the earnest moral sentiment of the Free-Soilers as opposed to the mere party loyalty which now characterised the Whigs.

On his return alone to Washington for the reopening of Congress in December 1848, he availed himself of many opportunities to support the principle of the famous Wilmot proviso, which insisted that slavery should not be extended into the territories acquired from Mexico. And for his own part he undertook to attempt its removal from the National Capital.

This he set about with characteristic shrewdness,

both in drawing the terms of the measure, and in winning for his scheme the support of representative men of the slavery and abolition parties. On January 16th, 1849, he introduced his bill as an amendment to another which had proposed more summary prohibition. But in spite of his efforts and of the apparently practicable character of the compromise, the domineering attitude of the slavery men prevented its passing into law. Thus his first effort to "deal with " what he had now come to recognise as the great national problem, ended in disappointment.

Of his social life in Washington we know little. He was a favourite among his fellow-boarders and loved to join them through the summer evenings in the bowling alley. His inexhaustible stories were well known wherever Congress-men assembled: and were sometimes heard at the breakfasts given by the great Whig orator, Daniel Webster.1

Personal contact with political leaders such as that with Webster, was by no means the least important part of Lincoln's experience in Washington. Old John Quincy Adams, formerly a member of Monroe's cabinet, the predecessor of Jackson in the Presidency, and the dauntless champion in the House of the right of petition--that is to say of petition against slavery -died in the capital during Lincoln's first session. Among other members of this Congress were Andrew Johnson, Simon Cameron, Caleb Smith, Hannibal Hamlin, and Jefferson Davis, with all of whom Lincoln was afterwards to have important political relations,

1 That friendly relations existed between Webster and Lincoln may also be inferred from the employment of the latter on a case involving Webster's title to certain property in Illinois.

while Stephen Douglas at this time, made his first appearance in the Senate.

As for the impression Lincoln made upon his new associates, we know little except that he impressed Senator Crittenden of Kentucky as a rising man. But his quaint simplicity and unconsciousness of outward eccentricities must often have attracted notice, as for example, when he carried home the books he had borrowed from the Library of the Supreme Court tied in a red handkerchief and slung across his shoulder. It was, however, his originality, his genuine unaffected difference from other men, which most impressed those who came into contact with him at this time. They understood that, whatever he might become, he was already a man of character.

Early in April, 1849, his sojourn in the Capital as member of the 30th Congress, came to an end. Almost the last ceremony he attended was the brilliant ball given to celebrate the inauguration of bluff old General Taylor, for whose election he had worked so assiduously. Then he withdrew once more into private life.1

But Congress-man Lincoln had deserved sufficiently well of his party to be offered a post under the new administration. He was at first attracted by the Secretaryship of Oregon, but found his wife resolved against going into the wilds. With good sense he

1 On one of his return journeys from Washington, Lincoln visited Niagara. Like every other traveller, he was impressed by that stupendous spectacle. But his comment is extraordinarily characteristic of the man; it betrays no more direct susceptibility to natural grandeur, than does Walt Whitman's record of his own visit to the same scene in 1848. Lincoln said afterwards: "the thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls, was, where in the world did all that water come from?"