speaker, three for the Republicans of Illinois, and three for the Republicans of New Hampshire."

On the same evening Mr. Lincoln spoke at Manchester, to an immense gathering in Smyth's Hall. The "Mirror," a neutral paper, gives the following enthusiastic notice of his speech: "The audience was a flattering one to the reputation of the speaker. It was composed of persons of all sorts of political notions, earnest to hear one whose fame was so great, and we think most of them went away thinking better of him than they anticipated they should. He spoke an hour and a half with great fairness, great apparent candor, and with wonderful interest. He did not abuse the South, the Administration, or the Democrats, or indulge in any personalities, with the solitary exception of a few hits at Douglas's notions. He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable, and yet he wins your attention and good will from the start.

"He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent passages; he is not a wit, a humorist or a clown; yet, so great a vein of pleasantry and good nature pervades what he says, gliding over a deep current of practical argument, he keeps his hearers. in a smiling good mood with their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his arguments; not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into his

train of belief, persons who are opposed to him. For the first half hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered, and from that point he began to lead them off, little by little, cunningly, till it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold. He displays more shrewdness, more knowledge of the masses of mankind than any public speaker we have heard since long Jim Wilson left for California."

From New Hampshire Lincoln went to Connecticut, where on March 5 he spoke at Hartford, on March 6 at New Haven, on March 8 at Woonsocket, on March 9 at Norwich. There are no reports of the New Hampshire speeches, but two of the Connecticut speeches were published in part and one in full. Their effect was very similar, according to the newspapers of the day, to that in New Hampshire, described by the "Atlas and Bee."

By his debates with Douglas and the speeches in Ohio, Kansas, New York and New England, Lincoln had become a national figure in the minds of all the political leaders of the country, and of the thinking men of the North. Never in the history of the United States had a man become prominent in a more logical and intelligent way. At the beginning of the struggle against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, Abraham Lincoln was scarcely known outside of his own State. Even most of the men whom he had met in his brief term in Congress had forgotten him. Yet in four years he had become one of the central figures of his

party; and now, by worsting the greatest orator and politician of his time, he had drawn the eyes of the nation to him.

It had been a long road he had travelled to make himself a national figure. Twenty-eight years before he had deliberately entered politics. He had been beaten, but had persisted; he had succeeded and failed; he had abandoned the struggle and returned to his profession. His outraged sense of justice had driven him back, and for six years he had travelled up and down Illinois trying to prove to men that slavery extension was wrong. It was by no one speech, by no one argument that he had wrought. Every day his ceaseless study and pondering gave him new matter, and every speech he made was fresh. He could not repeat an old speech, he said, because the subject enlarged and widened so in his mind as he went on that it was "easier to make a new one than an old one." He had never yielded in his campaign to tricks of oratory never played on emotions. He had been so strong in his convictions of the right of his case that his speeches had been arguments pure and simple. Their elegance was that of a demonstration in Euclid. They persuaded because they proved. He had never for a moment counted personal ambition before the cause. To insure an ardent opponent of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in the United States Senate, he had at one time given up his chance for the senatorship. To show the fallacy of Douglas's argument, he had asked a question which his party pleaded with him to pass

by, assuring him that it would lose him the election. In every step of this six years he had been disinterested, calm, unyielding, and courageous. He knew he was right, and could afford to wait. "The result is not doubtful," he told his friends. "We shall not fail - if we stand firm. We shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it; but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come."

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The country, amazed at the rare moral and intellectual character of Lincoln, began to ask questions about him, and then his history came out; a pioneer home, little schooling, few books, hard labor at all the many trades of the frontiersman, a profession mastered o' nights by the light of a friendly cooper's fire, an early entry into politics and lawand then twenty-five years of incessant poverty and struggle.

The homely story gave a touch of mystery to the figure which loomed so large. Men felt a sudden reverence for a mind and heart developed to these noble proportions in so unfriendly a habitat. They turned instinctively to one so familiar with strife for help in solving the desperate problem with which the nation had grappled. And thus it was that, at fifty years of age, Lincoln became a national figure.

LINCOLN'S LOVE FOR THE LITTLE ONES

Soon after his election as President and while visiting Chicago, one evening at a social gathering Mr. Lincoln saw a little girl timidly approaching him. He at once called her to him, and asked the little girl what she wished.

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She replied that she wanted his name.

Mr. Lincoln looked back into the room and said: But here are other little girls - they would feel badly if I should give my name only to you."

The little girl replied that there were eight of them in all.

"Then," said Mr. Lincoln, "get me eight sheets of paper, and a pen and ink, and I will see what I can do for you."

The paper was brought, and Mr. Lincoln sat down in the crowded drawing-room, and wrote a sentence upon each sheet, appending his name; and thus every little girl carried off her souvenir.

During the same visit and while giving a reception at one of the hotels, a fond father took in a little boy by the hand who was anxious to see the new President. The moment the child entered the parlor door he, of his own accord and quite to the surprise of his father, took off his hat, and, giving it a swing, cried: "Hurrah for Lincoln !" There was a crowd, but as soon as Mr. Lincoln could get hold of the little fellow, he lifted him in