the bleach-green was one shimmer of white, great spreads and drifts of white cloth, billowing and rippling like shallow pools of milk, as the breeze stirred under them. They were weighted down at the corners with huge, round stones. It was a pretty sight. I have never forgotten that bleach-green.

"I remember that day we had found a bank of clay, and the potter's son, Septimus, showed us how to model the stuff into pots and drinking-vessels, and afterwards even into the form of animals: dogs, fishes, and the lame cow that belonged to the widow at the end of the village. Simon made a wonderful beast, that he assured us was a lion, with twigs for legs, while I and Septimus patted and pinched our lump of clay to look like the great he-pig that had eaten a litter of puppies the week past a horror that was yet the talk of all the village.

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Joanna she was younger than all the rest of us--was fashioning little birds, clumsy, dauby little lumps of wet clay without much form. She was very proud of them, and set them in a row upon a stick, and called for us to look at them. As boys will, we made fun of her and her little, clumsy clay birds, because she was a girl, and Simon, my brother, said:

"Hoh, those aren't like birds at all. More like bullfrogs, I guess. I'll show you.'

"He and the rest of us took to making all manner of birds-pigeons, hawks, chickens, and the like. Septimus, the potter's son, executed a veritable masterpiece, a sort of peacock with tail spread which was very like, and which he swore he would take to his father's kiln to have baked. We all exclaimed over this marvel, and gathered about Septimus, praising him and his handiwork, and poor little Joanna and her foolish dauby lumps were forgotten. Then, of course, we all made peacocks, and set them in a row, and compared them with each other's. Joanna sat apart looking at us through her tears, and trying to pretend that she did not care for clay peacocks, that the ridicule of a handful of empty-headed boys did not hurt her, and that her stupid little birds were quite as brave as ours. Then she said, by and by, timid-like and half to herself, I think my birds are pretty, too.' Hoh,' says Septimus, look at Joanna's bullfrogs! Hoh! You are only a girl. What do you know? You don't know anything. I think you had better go home. We don't like to play with girls.'

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"She was too brave to let us see her cry, but she got up, and was just about going home across the bleach-green-in the green aisles between the webs of cloth-when Simon said to me and to the others:

“Look, quick, Mervius, here comes that man that father spoke about, the carpenter's son who has made such a stir.' And he pointed across the brook, down the road that runs from the city over towards the lake, the same lake where you say this Peter used to fish. Joanna stopped, and looked where he pointed; so did we all. I saw the man, the carpenter's son, whom Simon meant, and knew at once that it was he."

Old Jerome interrupted: "You had never seen him before. How did you know it was he?"

Mervius shook his head. "It was he. How could I tell? I don't know. I knew it was he."

"What did he look like ?" asked Jerome, interested.

Mervius paused. There was a silence. Jerome's crow looked at the bright coals of the fire, his head on one side.

"Not at all extraordinary," said Mervius at length. "His face was that of a peasant, sun-browned, touched, perhaps, with a certain calmness. That was all. A face that was neither sad nor glad, calm merely, and not unusually or especially pleasing. He was dressed as you and I are now- as a peasant-and his hands were those of a worker. Only his head was bare."

"Did he wear his beard?"

"No, that was afterward. He was younger when I saw him, about twenty-one maybe, and his face was smooth. There was nothing extraordinary about the man. Yet you knew it was he."

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He

"Yes," admitted Mervius, nodding his head. "Yes, I knew it was he. came up slowly along the road near the brook where we children were sitting. He walked as any traveler along those roads might, not thoughtful nor abstracted, but minding his steps and looking here and there about the country. The prettier things, I noted, seemed to attract him, and I particularly remember his stopping to look at a cherry-tree in full bloom and smelling at its blossoms. Once, too, he stopped and thrust out of the way a twig that had fallen across a little antheap. When he had come opposite us, he noticed us all standing there and looking at him quietly from across the brook, and he came down and stood on the other bank and asked us for a drink. There was a cup in an old bucket not far away that was kept there for those who worked on the bleach-green. I ran to fetch it, and when I had come back, he, the carpenter's son, had crossed the brook, and was sitting on the bank, and all the children were about him. He had little Joanna on his knee, and she had forgotten to cry. He drank out of the cup I gave him, and fell to asking us about what we had been doing. Then we all cried out together, and showed him our famous array of clay peacocks." "And you were that familiar with him?" said old Jerome.

"He seemed like another child to us," answered Mervius. "We were all about him, on his shoulders, on his knees, in his arms, and Joanna in his lap-she had forgotten to cry.

"See, see my birds,' she said. I tell you she had her arms around his neck. 'See, they said they were not pretty. They are pretty, aren't they, quite as pretty as theirs?'

'Prettier, prettier,' he said. 'Look now.' He set our little clay birds before him in a row. First mine, then Simon's, then those of Joseph and of Septimus, then one of little Joanna's shapeless little lumps. He looked at them, and at last touched the one Joanna had made with his finger-tip, then Did you ever see when corn is popping, how the grain swells, swells, swells, then bursts forth into whiteness? So it was then. No sooner had that little bird of Joanna, that clod of dust, that poor bit of common clay, felt the touch of his finger, than it awakened into life and became a live bird-and white, white as the sunshine, a beautiful little white bird that flew upward on the instant, with a tiny, glad note of song. We children shouted aloud, and Joanna danced and clapped her hands. And then it was the carpenter's son smiled. He looked at her as she looked up at that soaring white bird, and smiled, smiled just once, and then fell calm again. "He rose to go, but we hung about him, and clamored for him to stay. "No,' he said, as he kissed us all, I must go, go up to the city.' He crossed the brook, and looked back at us.

"Can't we go with you?' we cried to him. He shook his head.

"Where I am going you cannot go. But,' he added, I am going to make a place for just such as you.'

"And you'll come again?' we cried.

"Yes, yes, I shall come again.'

"Then he went away, though often looking back and waving his hand at us. What we said after he had gone I don't know. How we felt I cannot express. Long time and in silence we stood there watching, until his figure vanished around a bend in the road. Then we turned and went home across the bleach-green, through the green aisles between the webs of white cloth. We never told what had happened. That was just for ourselves alone. The same evening we heard of

THE LATER LIFE OF LINCOLN.

EMBRACING UNPUBLISHED LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES, AND OTHER UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS AND MATERIAL, RELATING TO LINCOLN'S PERSONAL LIFE DURING THE WAR.

BY IDA M. TARBELL,

Author of "The Early Life of Lincoln."

I.

MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT.

federacy, to provide it with a constitution, and to give it officers.

sissippi were not behind in their seizures, and when the new government was formed at Montgomery, it promptly took up the question of defending its life.

Y the election of November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the President-elect of Mr. Lincoln observed that each State, as the United States. For four she went out of the Union, prepared to demonths, however, he could fend her course if necessary. On November exercise no direct influence 18th, Georgia appropriated $1,000,000 to on the affairs of the country. arm the State, and in January she seized Forts If the South tried to make Pulaski and Jackson and the United States good her threat to secede arsenal. Louisiana appropriated all the fedin case he was elected, he eral property in her borders, even to the mint could do nothing to restrain and custom-house and the money they conher. The South did try, and at once. With tained. Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Misthe very election returns the telegraph brought Lincoln news of disruption. Day by day this news continued, and always more alarming. On November 10th, the United States senators from South Carolina resigned. Six weeks later, that State passed an ordinance of secession and began to organize an independent government. By the end of December, the only remnant of United States authority in South Carolina was the small garrison commanded by Major Anderson which occupied Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. The remaining forts and batteries of that harbor, the lighthouse tender, the arsenal, the post-office, the custom-house, in short, everything in the State over which the Stars and Stripes had floated, was under the Palmetto Flag.

In his quiet office in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln read, in January, reports of the proceedings of conventions in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, by all of which States, in that month, ordinances of secession were adopted. In February, he saw representatives of these same States unite in a general convention at Montgomery, Alabama, and the newspapers told him how promptly and intelligently they went to work to found a new nation, the Southern Con

Mr. Lincoln was not only obliged to sit inactive and watch this steady dissolution of the Union, but he was obliged to see what was still harder-that the administration which he was to succeed was doing nothing to check the destructionists. Indeed, all through this period proof accumulated that members of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet had been systematically working for many months to disarm the North and equip the South. The quantity of arms sent quietly from Northern arsenals was so great that the citizens of the towns from which they went became alarmed. Thus the Springfield "Republican" of January 2, 1861, noted that the citizens of that town were growing excited over "the procession of government licenses which, during the last spring and summer, and also quite recently, have been engaged in transporting from the United States Armory to the United States freight station, an immense quantity of boxes of muskets marked for Southern distribution." "We find," the paper continues, "that in 1860 there were removed for safe-keeping in other arsenals