tremendous popular vote, that left in the minds of men no question of the undying and deeply rooted love of the American people for Abraham Lincoln. In this day of triumph a lesser man than he would have exulted over those of his own political faith who were thus delivered into his hand. But his great and magnanimous soul held no thought of unkindness for those who had wounded him so deeply. Serenaded at the White House on the night next succeeding the November election of 1864, he said: "Now that the election is over, may not all, having a common interest, reunite in a common effort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven, and will strive, to place no obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be pained or disappointed by the result. May I ask those who were with me to join with me in the same spirit toward those who were against us?"

Lincoln's second inaugural address should be read with the first, if one would study the results wrought out in Lincoln's mind by four years of stress and strain as the head of the nation during a civil war. There are passages in this second inaugural address that are matchless in English literature. He was no longer the father plaintively pleading with wayward children who insisted upon fighting; he was rather

the people.

the elder brother lamenting the loss and woe which their headstrong acts had brought upon He poured out the tenderness and devotion of his great soul in these closing words: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work. we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Well may it be said, "No American President had ever spoken words like these to the American people. America never had a President who found such words in the depths of his heart."

Now came the closing scenes of the war. Lee's army surrendered to Grant, and peace was assured. The people went wild with joy; bonfires and illuminations lighted up the Northern sky, and the city of Washington was a blaze of light, as cannon boomed their warlike notes

to proclaim that the war was over. In the midst of this jubilation, our people were stunned by the announcement that the good President had fallen in the national capital, stricken by the hand of an assassin. No words can picture the grief of the nation as these appalling tidings went forth. As by magic the scene was changed from one of festivity and joy to one of mourning and

lamentation. But the man and the hour had

come and gone. The American Union was saved, slavery was destroyed, and peace at last brooded over a long-distracted and bleeding country. His work done, Lincoln's lifeless form was carried to his home in Springfield, Ill., where it was laid in the earth with many tears. The attorney for the people, as he always called himself, had prosecuted the cause entrusted to his hands. Trained as he

had been in the hard school of poverty and adversity, he had learned lessons of self-reliance and self-denial; he had learned the real value of human freedom, and had slowly absorbed into every fibre of his being the principles that lie at the foundation of human liberty and of selfgovernment. His mission was ended.

They who complain, as certain analysts have complained, that Lincoln's character, so strangely and weirdly mixed, is a mystery, may rest in the belief that all great geniuses are mysterious. Shakespeare is a mystery so profound that men have been put to the rash expedient of insisting that there was no real personality in that name. The subtle processes of mind by which a great genius like Lincoln arrives at conclusions, divines. men's motives and foresees events from afar, frames heaven-born truths in matchless words, or utters sayings of the profoundest wisdom, can never be understood by other men. It is useless to waste words in attempting any divination of the secret. It is even possible that the possessor of these rare gifts cannot himself understand them. Lincoln was to the last degree a reticent man. Although he had a certain freeand-easy, broad manner of meeting friendly approaches, there was in his nature a line beyond which not even his closest intimates could pass. None could be made uncomfortable by the feeling that he was repelled or excluded from that intimacy; but, with all his geniality and freedom of manner, he was never confiding of his innermost thoughts and emotions. Perhaps

this reserve deepened the mystery of his being. It certainly did veil the inner recesses of his character.

He was more ambitious than most of the men of his time gave him credit for. I am convinced that he dreamed of the Presidency long before destiny and the people's choice had turned his face in the direction of the White House. He was conscious of power within himself very early in his political career. But he was wise and shrewd-shrewd almost to the point of cunning. Nobody better than he knew how to veil his purposes while he yet held these in abeyance. If he "fooled" his advisers and petitioners while he put off and again put off his action, it was that he might be absolutely sure of the step before he took it. Once taken, there never was a backward movement. Never for a moment relaxing his intention to do, he waited with a patience that was immovable the ripeness of the time and the readiness of the people to go with him to the end of the thing to be done. Although he appeared to be led, he constantly and artfully and subtly led.

To the last his manners were simple, unaffected, and free from even the appearance of self-conscious greatness. When touched in his manly dignity, he showed his resentment; and at times, when he had been too long subjected to the worry and strain of the duties of his place, he was humanly irritable and even captious. Once, when a visitor had exhausted his patience with his profanity, he rose and, with awful dig.