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XXII.

JAMES B. FRY.

LTHOUGH I do not remember to have seen

Lincoln until the day of his first inauguration as President, I knew him through my father. Pioneers from Kentucky to Illinois, they were friends from an early period. Lincoln was a private in the volunteer forces commanded by my father in the Black Hawk War of 1831-2. He was always a man of note among his associates, in the Indian campaign as well as in subsequent political campaigns, especially in the contest with Douglas for the United States Senate. My father was an ardent personal and political friend of Douglas, and in his circle it was looked upon as presumptuous and ridiculous for Abe Lincoln to compete with the "Little Giant" for the Senate of the United States.

The contest proved that the so-called rail-splitter was the real giant, and led to his selection for the head of the new party at Chicago in the summer of 1860, and to his election to the Presidency in the following autumn. Lincoln and his Illinois competitor, Stephen A. Douglas, formed a striking contrast.

Douglas was low in stature, rotund in figure, with a short neck, a big bullet-head, and a chubby face. His lips were forced into the fixed smile characteristic of the popular and well-satisfied public man of a period when political success depended largely upon what a man said, how he said it, and how he appeared in personal intercourse with the people; and not, as now, much upon what newspapers say of him and for him.

Lincoln was tall and thin; his long bones were united by large joints, and he had a long neck and an angular face and head. Many likenesses represent his face well enough, but none that I have ever seen do justice to the awkwardness and ungainliness of his figure. His feet, hanging loosely to his ankles, were prominent objects; but his hands were more conspicuous even than his feet-due perhaps to the fact that ceremony at times compelled him to clothe them in white kid gloves, which always fitted loosely. Both in the height of conversation and in the depth of reflection his hand now and then ran over or supported his head, giving his hair habitually a disordered aspect. I never saw him when he appeared to me otherwise than a great man, and a very ugly one. His expression in repose was sad and dull; but his ever-recurring humor, at short intervals, flashed forth with the brilliancy of an electric light. I observed but two well-defined expressions in his

countenance; one, that of a pure, thoughtful, honest man, absorbed by a sense of duty and responsibility; the other, that of a humorist so full of fun that he could not keep it all in. His power of analysis was wonderful. He strengthened every case he stated, and no anecdote or joke ever lost force or effect from his telling. He invariably carried the listener with him to the very climax, and when that was reached in relating a humorous story, he laughed all over. His large mouth assumed an unexpected and comical shape, the skin on his nose gathered into wrinkles, and his small eyes, though partly closed, emitted infectious rays of fun. It was not only the aptness of his stories, but his way of telling them, and his own unfeigned enjoyment, that gave them zest, even among the gravest men and upon the most serious occasions.

Nevertheless, Lincoln-a good listener-was not a good conversationalist. When he talked, he told a story or argued a case. But it should be remembered that during the entire four years of his Presidency, from the spring of 1861 until his death in April, 1865, civil war prevailed. It bore heaviest upon him, and his mind was bent daily, hourly even, upon the weighty matters of his high office; so that, as he might have expressed it, he was either lifting with all his might at the butt-end of the log, or sitting upon it whittling, for rest and recreation.