address was at times abrupt, it was at least frank and unmistakable. Both friend and foe knew exactly where to find them. Unskilled in the doublings of the mere politician or the trimmer, they have borne themselves straight forward to the points whither their judgment and conscience directed. Such men may bave been deemed fit subjects for the jests and sneers of more cultivated Europeans, but they are none the less dear to us as Americans-will none the less take their place among those whose names the good, throughout the world, will not willingly let die.
of this class, pre-eminently, was the statesman whose life and public servioes the following pages are to exbibit.
A BRAHAM LINCOLN, Sixteenth President of the United States, son of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln—the former a Kentuckian, the latter a Virginian-was born February 12th, 1809, near Hodgenville, the county-seat of what is now known as La Rue county, Kentucky. He had one sister, two years his senior, who died, married, in early womanhood; and his only brother, his junior by two years, died in childhood.
When nine years of age, be lost his mother, the family having, two years previously, removed to what was then the territory of Indiana, and settled in the southern part, near the Ohio river, about midway between Louisville and Evansville. The thirteen years which the lad spent here inured him to all the exposures and hardships of frontier life. An active assistant in farm duties, he neglected no opportunity of strengthening bis mind, reading with avidity sucb instructive works as he could procure—on winter evenings, oftentimes, by the light of the blazing fire-place. As satisfaction for damage accidentally done to a borrowed copy of Weems' Life of Washington—the only one known to be in the neighborhood—be pulled fodder for two days for the owner.
At twenty years of age, he had reached the height of nearly six feet and four inches, with a comparatively slender yet uncommonly strong, muscular frame-a youthful giant