After his Cooper Union Speech, February 27, 1860, Mr. Lincoln visited, among other places, Norwich, Conn. The following is his answer to a question of Mr. Gulliver, in the railway train on his way back to New York:

LINCOLN'S METHOD OF STUDY.

Well, as to education, the newspapers are correct; I never went to school more than six months in my life. But, as you say, this must be a product of culture in some form. I have been putting the question you ask me to myself, while you have been talking. I can say this, that among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I don't think I ever got angry at anything else in my life. But that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening ! with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I often tried to, when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I

ew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with

me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it north, and bounded it south, and bounded it east, and bounded it west. Perhaps that accounts for the characteristic you observe in my speeches, though I never put the two things together before.

Oh, yes! I "read law," as the phrase is—that is, I became a lawyer's clerk in Springfield, and copied tedious documents, and picked up what I could of law in the intervals of other work. But your question reminds me of a bit of education I had, which I am bound in honesty to mention. In the course of my law-reading, I constantly came upon the word demonstrate. I thought at first that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I said to myself, "What do I mean when I demonstrate, more than when I reason or prove? How does demonstration differ from any other proof?" I consulted Webster's Dictionary. That told of "certain proof," "proof beyond the possibility of doubt"; but I could form no idea what sort of proof that was. I thought a great many things were proved beyond a possibility of doubt, without recourse to any such extraordinary process of reasoning as I understood "demonstration" to be. I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better results. You might as well have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said, "Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means";

and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what "demonstrate" means, and went back to my law-studies.

LINCOLN'S THREE GREAT POLITICAL

SPEECHES.

Three speeches have been chosen to represent Mr. Lincoln in the political field: Springfield, June 16, 1858; Chicago, July 10, 1858; Cooper Union, February 27, 1860. They present, when taken together, not only his own political faith, but "a body of Republican doctrine" which can scarce anywhere be equaled. Two of them, the first and third, show him at his best, for they were, probably, the most carefully prepared speeches of his life. The first struck the keynote of the great contest which ended in the downfall of slavery, and was the text from which Lincoln departed but little in his great debate with Douglas the same year. The third is a tremendous summary of the situation in 1860 and presents Lincoln's ripest and fullest thought upon that situation. Of this speech Mr. Greeley afterwards said, "I do not hesitate to pronounce it the very best political address to which I ever listened-and I have heard some of Webster's grandest." The whole history of slavery in this

country is contained in these speeches and set forth. with transparent clearness. "The (Cooper Union) speech is worthy of great praise, and ought to be read entire by him who would fully understand the history of the year 1860."*-Ed.

SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.

(Delivered June 16, 1858, at the close of the Republican State Convention, by which Mr. Lincoln was nominated for United States Senator.)

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:-If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself can not stand." I believe this Government can not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of *Rhodes, Vol. II., p. 431.

slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak-compounded of the Nebraska doctrine* and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action among its chief master-workers from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibi

This opened all the national territory to slavery,

and was the first point gained.

But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained and give chance for more. This necessity had not been overlooked, but had

*The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, approved by President Pierce May 30, 1854.