and often in scenes which were riots. "Ah me such an assembly," wrote Longfellow in his Journal after one of these speeches of Sumner. "It was like one of Beethoven's symphonies played in a saw-mill." Whittier was laboring at Amesbury by letters of counsel and encouragement to friends, by his pure, high-souled poems of protest and promise and by his editorials to the “National Era," which he and his friends had just started in Washington. Lowell was publishing the last of the Biglow Papers and preparing the whole for the book form. He was writing, too, some of his noblest prose. Emerson, Palfrey, Hoar, Adams, Phillips, Garrison, were all at work. Giddings had been there from Ohio. Only a few days before Lincoln arrived a great convention of free soilers and bolting Whigs had been held in Tremont Temple and its earnestness and passion had produced a deep impression. Sensitive as Lincoln was to every shade of popular feeling and conviction the sentiment in New England stirred him as he had never been stirred before, on the question of slavery. Listening to Seward's speech in Tremont Temple, he seems to have had a sudden insight into the truth, a quick illumination; and that night, as the two men sat talking, he said gravely to the great anti-slavery advocate: "Governor Seward, I have been thinking about what you said in your speech. 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." CHAPTER XIV LINCOLN AT NIAGARA- -SECURES a patent FOR AN INVENTION-ABANDONS POLITICS AND DECIDES TO DEVOTE HIMSELF TO THE LAW It was late in September when Lincoln started westward from his campaigning in New England. He stopped in Albany, N. Y., and in company with Thurlow Weed called on Fillmore then candidate for Vice-President. From Albany he went to Niagara. Mr. Herndon once asked him what made the deepest impression on him when he stood before the Falls. "The thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls," he responded, "was, where in the world did all that water come from?" The memory of Niagara remained with him and aroused many speculations. Among various notes for lectures which Nicolay and Hay found among Mr. Lincoln's papers after his death and published in his "Complete Works," is a fragment on Niagara which shows how deeply his mind was stirred by the majesty of that mighty wonder. "Niagara Falls! By what mysterious power is it that millions and millions are drawn from all parts of the world to gaze upon Niagara Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every effect is just as any intelligent man, knowing the causes, would anticipate without seeing it. If the water moving onward in a great river reaches a point where there is a perpendicular jog of a hundred feet in descent in the bottom of the river, it is plain the water will have a violent and continuous plunge at that point. It is also plain, 19 the water, thus plunging, will foam and roar, and send up a mist continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rainbows. The mere physical of Niagara Falls is only this. Yet this is really a very small part of that world's wonder. Its power to excite reflection and emotion is its great charm. The geologist will demonstrate that the plunge, or fall, was once at Lake Ontario, and has worn its way back to its present position; he will ascertain how fast it is wearing now, and so get a basis for determining how long it has been wearing back from Lake Ontario, and finally demonstrate by it that this world is at least fourteen thousand years old. A philosopher of a slightly different turn will say, 'Niagara Falls is only the lip of the basin out of which pours all the surplus water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand square miles of the earth's surface.' He will estimate with approximate accuracy that five hundred thousand tons of water fall with their full weight a distance of a hundred feet each minute thus exerting a force equal to the lifting of the same weight, through the same space, in the same time. . . . "But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When Columbus first sought this continent-when Christ suffered on the cross-when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea-nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker; then, as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of America have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now. Contemporary with the first race of men, and older than the first man, Niagara is strong and fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago. The Mammoth and Mastodon, so long dead that fragments of their monstrous bones alone testify that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara-in that long, long time never still for a single moment, never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested." In his trip westward to Springfield from Niagara there oc curred an incident which started Lincoln's mind on a new line of thought one which all that fall divided it with politics. It happened that the boat by which he made part of the MODEL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEVICE FOR LIFTING VESSELS OVER SHOALS. The inscription above this model in the Model Hall of the Patent Office, reads: "6469, Abraham Lin- |