to your mother, and tell her that I have so many outside matters to attend to now, that I have put that case and others in the hands of a lawyer friend of mine, and if you will call on him (giving name and address) he will give you the information you want." After they had gone, I said: "Mr. Lincoln, you did not seem to know the young men?" He laughed and said, "No, I had never seen them before, and I had to beat about the bush till I found who they were. It was uphill work, but I topped it at last." Then visitors came in and the sitting closed for the morning.

As the work on the portrait advanced, Mr. Lincoln became more and more interested in its progress. At one time he said, "It interests me to see how, by adding a touch here and a touch there, you make it look more like me. I do not understand it, but I see it is a vocation in which the work is very fine." I said, "That is the reason why painting is called one of the fine arts." He said, "I once read a book which gave an account of some Italian painters and their work in the fifteenth century, and, taking the author's statement for it, they must have had a great talent for the work they had to do." Then visitors claimed his attention for the rest of the day.

Once, during a sitting, I asked Mr. Lincoln how he first heard the news of his nomination. He said, "There were a dozen or twenty of us in the tele

graph office, and we were receiving dispatches from the convention every few minutes, and as they came the operator handed them to me to read to those present. Then one came announcing that my name was before the convention, but I had no idea that there was any chance of my nomination. However, the next dispatch brought the report. I couldn't read this one to them, so I said, there is a little woman down at the house who will be interested in this, and, handing them the dispatch, I left them to discuss it among themselves; and this is the way I first got the news."

The Republican State Convention was over, and Richard Yates had received the nomination for governor. He was frequently in the office consulting with Mr. Lincoln on the politics of the State, and it was a streak of good luck for Yates that he had for his adviser a man so wise, discreet and determined. The Democratic State Convention was in session the week I was in Springfield, and an interesting episode it was. After the daily adjournments the delegates used to come in squads of ten or twenty to pay their respects to Mr. Lincoln, and the odd thing about these calls was, that, in shaking hands with him, they invariably addressed him as Mr. President. Some of them, more familiar than others, before the interview was over, would end by calling him Abe.

The final adjournment of the Democratic State Convention recalls an incident which occurred on the night train from Springfield to Pittsburgh, on my return East. Many of the delegates who were going to attend the Democratic National Conven-. tion to be held in Baltimore took the train in which I was. They were a noisy crowd, mostly occupying one car, and it was evident that they intended making a night of it. I had placed in charge of the porter of the sleeper, the box containing the portrait, and he had locked it in a small room at the end of the car. I turned into my section and was soon asleep. Some time in the night, I was awakened by the loud talking of several men, and I heard one of them say to the porter: "We hear that there is in this car a picture of Abe Lincoln, and it's no use talking any more about it, we mean to have it trotted out." The The porter said: "It is locked up and the gentleman has the key." "Well," said he, "where is the man who has the key?" The porter had betrayed me, and the men came to my berth. I feigned sleep. One of them shook me, saying, 'Here, mister—I say, wake up! wake up! There is a lot of us in the other car, and we want to see Old Abe's picture, and the man there," pointing to the porter, "says you've got the key, and you had better let us have it just as quick as you can, for we are bound to have some fun out of it to-night."

Said I, "Neighbor, I am very tired and sleepy, and I wish you would go away. I have not got the key, and, if you will go away now, we will talk about seeing the picture in the morning." With a parting word to the porter, which I did not catch the import of, they left the car. In the morning I saw nothing of the delegates to the Baltimore Convention, and the box was not opened till it reached my studio in New York.

The portrait was finished; and Mr. Lincoln had taken great interest in its progress and had expressed himself as pleased with the result. He said, "It will give the people of the East a correct idea how I look at home, and, in fact, how I look in my office. I think the picture has a somewhat pleasanter expression than I usually have, but that, perhaps, is not an objection."

Mrs. Lincoln was to have come to the office to see the portrait, but on the day appointed it was very rainy, so I had it taken to the house. It was carried to the drawing-room, where I put it in a proper light to be seen, and placed a chair for Mrs. Lincoln. Sitting down before it, she said, Yes, that is Mr. Lincoln. It is exactly like him, and his friends in New York will see him as he looks here at home. How I wish I could keep it, or have a copy of it."

The residence of Mr. Lincoln in Springfield was a