When he was a young man at New Salem in 1834 Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" and Volney's "Ruines" made a great impression upon him, and he prepared a review of these books, which it is supposed he intended to read before a literary society that had been organized in the neighborhood. His friend, Samuel Hill, with his old-fashioned notions of atheism, got hold of the manuscript and burned it. Lincoln was quite indignant at the time, but afterwards admitted that Hill had done him a service. This incident has often been cited as evidence that Lincoln was an agnostic, just as other incidents in his life have been used to prove that he was a spiritualist, and still others that he was a Freemason; but he was none of them. He commended Masonry, but never joined that order; his inquisitive mind led him to investigate certain spiritualistic phenomena, and his essay at New Salem was nothing more than a presentation of the views of two famous unbelievers without personal endorsement.

Like Napoleon, Wellington, Bismarck, and other famous men, Lincoln was very superstitious. That peculiarity appeared frequently during his life. Even to the very day of his death, as related in Chapter VII., he told his Cabinet and General Grant of a dream which he was accustomed to have before important events in the war. A curious incident is related in his own language:

"A very singular occurrence took place the day I was nominated at Chicago, four years ago, of which I am reminded to-night. In the afternoon of the day, returning home from down town, I went upstairs to Mrs. Lincoln's reading-room. Feeling somewhat tired, I lay down upon a couch in the room, directly opposite a bureau, upon which was a looking-glass. As I reclined, my eye fell upon the glass, and I saw distinctly two images of myself, exactly alike, except that one was a little paler than the other. I arose, and lay down again

with the same result. It made me quite uncomfortable for a few moments, but, some friends coming in, the matter passed out of my mind. The next day, while walking on the street, I was suddenly reminded of the circumstance, and the disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I had never seen anything of the kind before, and did not know what to make of it. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position, and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction of optics which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment, with a like result; and, as I had said to myself, accounting for it on some principle unknown to me, it ceased to trouble me. But some time ago I tried to produce the same effect here by arranging a glass and couch in the same position, without success.'

He did not say, at this time, that either he or Mrs. Lincoln attached any significance to the phenomenon, but it is known that Mrs. Lincoln regarded it as a sign that the President would be re-elected.

President Lincoln once invited a famous medium to display his alleged supernatural powers at the White House, several members of the Cabinet being present. For the first half-hour the demonstrations were of a physical character. At length rappings were heard beneath the President's feet, and the medium stated that an Indian desired to communicate with him.

"I shall be happy to hear what his Indian majesty has to say," replied the President, "for I have very recently received a deputation of our red brethren, and it was the only delegation, black, white, or blue, which did not volunteer some advice about the conduct of the war."

The medium then called for a pencil and paper, which were laid upon the table and afterwards covered with a handkerchief. Presently knocks were heard and the

paper was uncovered. To the surprise of all present, it read as follows:

'Haste makes waste, but delays cause vexations. Give vitality by energy. Use every means to subdue. Proclamations are useless. Make a bold front and fight the enemy; leave traitors at home to the care of loyal men. Less note of preparation, less parade and policy talk, and more action.-Henry Knox."

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That is not Indian talk," said the President. 'Who is Henry Knox ?"

The medium, speaking in a strange voice, replied, "The first Secretary of War."

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"Oh, yes; General Knox," said the President. Stanton, that message is for you; it is from your predecessor. I should like to ask General Knox when this rebellion will be put down."

The answer was oracularly indefinite. The medium then called up Napoleon, who thought one thing, Lafayette another, and Franklin differed from both.

"Ah!" exclaimed the President; "opinions differ among the saints as well as among the sinners. Their talk is very much like the talk of my Cabinet. I should like, if possible, to hear what Judge Douglas says about this war," said the President.

After an interval, the medium rose from his chair and, resting his left hand on the back, his right into his bosom, spoke in a voice no one could mistake who had ever heard Mr. Douglas. He urged the President to throw aside all advisers who hesitated about the policy to be pursued, and said that, if victory were followed up by energetic action, all would be well.

"I believe that," said the President, "whether it comes from spirit or human. It needs not a ghost from the bourne from which no traveller returns to tell that."

His taint of superstition, like his tendency to melancholy, was doubtless inherited from his ancestors and was shared by all sensitive people whose lives were

spent in the mysterious solitude and isolation of the Western frontier. It is manifested by the denizens of the forests, the mountains, and the plains, and wherever else sensitive natures are subjected to loneliness and the company of their own thoughts. Lincoln's mind was peculiarly sensitive to impressions; his nature was intensely sympathetic, his imagination was vivid, and his observation was keen and comprehensive. With all his candor, he was reticent and secretive in matters that concerned himself, and the struggle of his early life, his dismal and depressing surroundings, the death of his mother, and the physical conditions in which he was born and bred were just the influences to develop the morbid tendency which was manifested on several occasions in such a manner as to cause anxiety and even alarm among his friends. He realized the danger of submitting to it, and the cure invented and prescribed by himself was to seek for the humorous side of every event and incident and to read all the humorous books he could find.

His poetic temperament was developed early and frequently manifested while he was in the White House. He loved melancholy as well as humorous poems. He could repeat hymns by the hundreds, and quoted Dr. Watts' and John Wesley's verses as frequently as he did Shakespeare or Petroleum V. Nasby or Artemas Ward. His favorite poem was "Oh! Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud."

Judge Weldon, of the Court of Claims, remembers the first time he heard him repeat it. "It was during a term of court, in the same year, at Lincoln, a little town named for Mr. Lincoln. We were all stopping at the hotel, which had a very big room with four beds, called the lawyers' room. Some of us thin fellows doubled up; but I remember that Judge Davis, who was as large then as he was afterwards, when a Justice of the Supreme Bench, always had a bed to himself. Mr. Lincoln

was an early riser, and one morning, when up early, as usual, and dressed, he sat before the big old-fashioned fireplace and repeated aloud from memory that whole hymn. Somebody asked him for the name of the author; but he said he had never been able to learn who wrote it, but wished he knew. There were a great many guesses, and some said that Shakespeare must have written it. But Mr. Lincoln, who was better read in Shakespeare than any of us, said that they were not Shakespeare's words. I made a persistent hunt for the author, and years after found the hymn was written by an Englishman, William Knox, who was born in 1789 and died in 1825."

All his life Lincoln was a temperance man. His first essay was a plea for temperance. His second was a eulogy of the Declaration of Independence. He belonged to the Sons of Temperance in Springfield, and frequently made temperance speeches. Judge Weldon remembers that he was once in Mr. Douglas's room at Springfield when Lincoln entered, and, following the custom, Mr. Douglas produced a bottle and some glasses and asked his callers to join him in a drink. Lincoln declined on the ground that for thirty years he had been a temperance man and was too old to change. Leonard Swett says,

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He told me not more than a year before he was elected President that he had never tasted liquor in his life. What!' I said, 'Do you mean to say that you never tasted it?' 'Yes,' he replied, 'I never tasted it.'"

In one of his speeches is found this assertion: "Reasonable men have long since agreed that intemperance is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all evils of mankind."

Mr. C. C. Coffin, a famous newspaper writer of that time, who accompanied the notification committee from the Chicago Convention to Springfield, related in his newspaper a few days later an incident that occurred on