understood, rather than saw, the unadvisability of present activity on his part. It was nothing to him that other men, such as in after-time mistook themselves and their frantic outcries for causes instead of effervescent effects, were all the while hurling anathemas at any who might dare await the coming fullness of time. It had not come, and he would bravely wait.

The great mass of American citizens went somewhat stolidly on with their plowing and planting, their merchandise, their politics,—such as they thought they could understand,—and their religions, such as they had.

The fullness of time came, and with it the man who had ripened with it for the work of the great harvest; but even now, after the work is done and he has passed on out of the field, there still remain those who look back to the year 1850, and even later, and try to persuade themselves and others: "At that time Mr. Lincoln's mind was not made up. He was no further advanced then than we ourselves were."

By others somewhat this sort of comment has been freely made: "He and the other politicians were ready enough to reap the harvest we had sown and tilled for them. The new political world was created by us and we put into it the men, like Lincoln, whom we manufactured out of the dust of the earth. We blew into them all the life they ever had."

Mr. Lincoln's determination to abstain from current politics was so firm, that when in that very year the nomination for Congress was again offered him, he positively and publicly declined it. It is very possible that he could have been elected, as all personal opposition to him had ebbed away. But there was little to be then accomplished at Washington which could not just as well be done by other men. Moreover, the sacrifice of professional and domestic interests and ties would then have been greater than before.

His father's health began to fail towards the close of 1850, and Mr. Lincoln took care that his last days should be provided for in every needful way. It was also just before the birth of

little "Tad," and there were other reasons which forbade a prolonged absence from Springfield.

As for Thomas Lincoln, it is pleasant to know how tenderly and kindly the poor old shiftless Kentucky ne'er-do-well was cared for upon his death-bed by his faithful son. Mr. Lincoln wrote to his step-brother, John Johnston, a letter which closes with the following sentences:

"I sincerely hope father may yet recover his health; but at all events tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of the sparrow and numbers the hairs of our heads; and He will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that, if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant; but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyful meeting with loved ones gone before, and where the rest of us, through the mercy of God, hope ere long to join them."

These utterances, too, may well stand as an answer to those who tried to make the thoughtful man responsible for the raw infidelity of the thinking youth. This faith in the fatherhood of God, and his later manifestations of positive belief in the brotherhood of man, are not far from obedience to the great commandments on which, said Jesus, "hang all the law and the prophets."

After his father's death, as before, Mr. Lincoln continued his kind offices to his step-mother, and to other members of the family, although some of the latter took a course in life which reflected small credit upon her or him. He probably did as much for all of them as was in any manner well or worth while.

CHAPTER XX.

A GREAT AWAKENING.

Colonization-The Kansas-Nebraska Act-The Barriers Broken DownLincoln's First Great Speech-Stephen A. Douglas-Growth of a New Party-Discovering a Leader-An Oratorical Match.

IN July, 1852, Mr. Lincoln was selected by the citizens of Springfield to deliver a funeral oration upon Henry Clay. He performed the public duty allotted him, but with an absence of enthusiasm for his old political idol which occasioned remark. It need not have surprised any who knew him well. He had that upon his mind which forbade his rising to any unusual height of eloquence in dealing with the memory of a statesman whose sun had set behind the clouds of " compromise" of the slavery question. The only noteworthy feature of the address is its bewildered agreement with Mr. Clay's idea of the colonization of the black people in Africa as a possible remedy for existing evils. Clearly foreseeing the awful perils into which the country was drifting; discovering no possibility of emancipation upon the soil of the United States; regarding the continued presence of such a population as a danger to the future welfare of the whites, both of the North and South-all the threatening images with which his inner thought was turning goaded him on in a search which seemed hopeless. In such a state of mind, the vain chimera of a wholesale transportation of the apparent cause of the coming strife and misery to other lands took hold of him with a power which would have been impossible had any alternative proposition been presented. It clung to him for years with a pertinacity which is not at all wonderful, but which is not easy