"Daniel, is there a woman with a baby in the anteroom? Send her to me at once."

She went in, told her story, and the President pardoned her husband. As she came out from his presence her lips were moving in prayer and the tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Madam, it was the baby that did it!" said the messenger.

Mr. A. B. Chandler, who had charge of the telegraph office at the War Department, says that on several occasions Lincoln came to the office near midnight with a message written by his own hand in order that there should be no mistake or delay in sending respite to a condemned soldier. "I think," said Mr. Chandler, "he never failed to interpose his power to prevent the execution of a soldier for sleeping at his post, or any other than a wilful and malicious act; and even in such cases, when brought to his attention, he made the most careful review of the facts, and always seemed more anxious to find the offender innocent than guilty; and when guilty he was disposed to take into consideration, as far as possible, any extenuating circumstances in favor of the wrong-doer.

"On New Year's morning, 1864," continued Mr. Chandler," Mr. Lincoln was about opening the door of the military telegraph office. A woman stood in the hall, crying. Mr. Lincoln had observed this, and as soon as he was seated he said to Major Eckert, 'What is the woman crying about just outside your door? I wish you would go and see,' said Mr. Lincoln. So the major went out and learned that the woman had come to Washington expecting to be able to go to the army and see her soldier husband, which was not altogether unusual for ladies to do while the army was in the winter-quarters; but very strict orders had recently been issued prohibiting women from visiting the army, and she found herself with her child, in Washington, incurring more

expense than she supposed would be necessary, with very little money, and in great grief. This being explained to the President, he said, in his frank, off-hand way, 'Come, now, let's send her down: what do you say?'

"The major explained the strict orders that the Department had issued lately, the propriety of which Mr. Lincoln recognized, but he was still unwilling to yield his purpose. Finally the major suggested that a leave of absence to come to Washington might be given the woman's husband. The President quickly adopted the suggestion, and directed that Colonel Hardie, an assistant adjutant-general on duty in an adjoining room, should make an official order permitting the man to come to Washington."

But when provoked, or when his sense of justice was violated, Lincoln showed a terrible temper. It is related that on one occasion when the California delegation in Congress called upon him to present a nominee for an office, they disputed the right of Senator Baker, of Oregon, to be consulted respecting the patronage of the Pacific coast. One of them unwisely attacked the private character and motives of the Oregon Senator, forgetting that he had been one of Lincoln's oldest and closest friends in Illinois. The President's indignation was aroused instantly, and he defended Baker and denounced his accusers with a vehemence that is described as terrible. The California delegation never questioned the integrity of his friends again.

66

"Of all public men," said John B. Alley, none seemed to have so little pride of opinion. He was always learning, and did not adhere to views which he found to be erroneous, simply because he had once formed and held them. I remember that he once expressed an opinion to me, on an important matter, quite different from what he had expressed a short time before, and I said, 'Mr. President, you have changed your mind en

tirely within a short time.' He replied, 'Yes, I have; and I don't think much of a man who is not wiser to-day than he was yesterday.' A remark full of wisdom and sound philosophy. Mr. Lincoln was so sensible, so broad-minded, so philosophical, so noble in his nature, that he saw only increasing wisdom in enlarged experience and observation."

Senator Conners, of California, said, "One morning I called on the President to talk with him on some public business, and as soon as we met he began by asking if I knew Captain Maltby, now living in California, saying, 'He is visiting here and his wife is with him.' I replied that I knew of him, and had heard he was in Washington. He said that when he first came to Springfield, where he was unknown, and a carpet-bag contained all he owned in the world, and he was needing friends, Captain Maltby and his wife took him into their modest dwelling; that he lived with them while he 'put out his shingle' and sought business.

He had known Maltby during the period of the Black Hawk War. No one was ever treated more kindly than he was by them. He had risen in the world and they were poor, and Captain Maltby wanted some place which would give him a living. 'In fact,' said he, 'Maltby wants to be Superintendent of the Mint at San Francisco, but he is hardly equal to that. I want to find some place for him, and into which he will fit, and I know nothing about these things.' I said, 'There is a place Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Californiawhere the incumbent should be superseded for cause, and the place is simply a great farm, where the government supplies the means of carrying it on; there is an abundance of Indian labor, and making it produce and accounting for the products are the duties principally.' He replied, Maltby is the man for this place,' and he was made entirely happy by being able to serve an old and good man."

II

THE LEADER OF THE SPRINGFIELD BAR

ABRAHAM LINCOLN inherited his love of learning from his mother, who was superior in intelligence and refinement to the women of her class and time. His ambition to become a lawyer was inspired by a copy of the Revised Statutes of Indiana which accidentally fell into his hands when he was a mere boy in the swampy forests of the southern section of that State. In the brief autobiography already referred to, which he prepared for the newspapers to gratify public curiosity when he was nominated as a candidate for Presi dent, he says that he "went to school by littles; in all, it did not amount to more than a year," and he afterwards told a friend that he "read through every book he ever heard of in that country for a circuit of fifty miles." These included Weems's "Life of Washing. ton," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Esop's "Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," a History of the United States whose author is not named, the Bible, and the Statutes of Indiana.

This is the catalogue he gave of the books he knew in his youth. His biographer included Plutarch's "Lives," and when the advanced sheets of the campaign sketch reached Lincoln he gave a curious exhibition of his habitual accuracy by calling attention to the fact that this was not exact when it was written, "for, up to that moment in my life, I had never seen that early contribution to human history; but I want your book, even if it is nothing more than a mere campaign sketch, to be faithful to the facts, and, in order that the statement might be literally true, I secured the book (Plu

tarch's 'Lives') a few weeks ago and have sent for you to tell you that I have just read it through."

It is quite remarkable that a country lad, almost illiterate, should have found a volume of statutes interesting reading, but Lincoln read and reread it until he had almost committed its contents to memory, and in afteryears, when any one cited an Indiana law, he could usually repeat the exact text and often give the numbers of the page, chapter, and paragraph. The book belonged to David Turnham, who seems to have been a constable or magistrate in that part of Indiana, and this volume constituted his professional library. The actual copy is now preserved in the library of the New York Law Institute. The binding is worn and the title-page and a few leaves at the end are missing. Besides the statutes as enacted up to 1824, it contains the Declaration of Independence, the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Indiana, and the Act of Virginia, passed in 1783, by which "The territory North Westward of the river Ohio" was conveyed to the United States, and the ordinance of 1787 for governing that territory, of which Article VI. reads:

"There shall neither be slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall be duly convicted; provided always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed, in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid."

It is an interesting coincidence that Abraham Lincoln should not only have received the impressions which guided him in the choice of his career from this volume, but also his first knowledge of the legal side of slavery. Before he finished that book he knew the principles upon which the government of the United States was founded and how they were applied in the States.