whining piteously. As the banks were fringed with broken ice, the dog was afraid to make the plunge. To the suggestion that they go on without him, Abe said: "I could not endure the thought of abandoning even a dog." Pulling off his shoes and socks, he waded the icy stream and returned with the quivering animal under his arm. Lincoln declared that the frantic leaps of joy and the other demonstrations of gratitude by the dog were reward enough.

It was this same tender heart, only grown bigger and more tender, to which, when he became President, the mothers never appealed in vain when their soldier boys were under penalty of death. Secretary Stanton often complained that he could never get soldiers shot for desertion if the women succeeded in getting to Lincoln first. A soldier with a grievance, who had been rebuffed by everyone else to whom he had appealed, followed Mr. Lincoln to the Soldiers' Home near Washington. The President, beset by disaster on every hand, and overborne with care, reproved the man and sent him away. After a night of remorse, Lincoln went early the next morning to the man's hotel, begged his forgiveness for treating with rudeness one in sore distress who had offered his life for his country, took him in his carriage and saw him

through his difficulties. Secretary Stanton, when told what had been done, apologized to Mr. Lincoln for having rejected the man's appeal. "No, no," replied Lincoln, "you did right in adhering to your rules. If we had such a soft-headed old fool as I am in your place there would be no rules that the Army and the Country could depend upon."

Lincoln's moral preparation for the burdens of responsibilities yet to be thrust upon him was commensurate with his physical growth, his mental development, his tenderness of heart. Grown up under crude environment, subjected to the influences of roughness, coarseness, intemperance, and immorality, endowed with abounding physical vigour and enjoying well-nigh universal popularity among both men and women, from his youth he lived his life clean and wholesome. He shared the sports and pleasures of his youthful contemporaries, yet at no point did he yield to those human weaknesses which impair both the moral stamina and the physical powers.

In after years, when the political tempest was at its worst, when bitterness and hatred reached the white heat of threatened assassination, his antagonists, bent upon his political destruction, searched in vain his whole life through for some

moral taint, some scandal, some dishonest act, but found nothing that might not have been proclaimed from the housetops to his honour. He walked humbly with his God.

CHAPTER V

FORTUNATE FAILURES

Ar the age of twenty-one, Lincoln, with the rest of the family, moved into Illinois. The time had now come to begin life for himself. He had long felt the call to a broader field of activity than the circumstances of his home life afforded, and had often been tempted to break away and strike out for a future of his own. But his sense of loyalty and obligation to his parents had held him from the fulfilment of his longing for a more active life. Being now of age, he could follow the bent of his aspirations.

He did not hesitate to accept the most humble tasks in order to meet his pressing necessities. His great physical strength enabled him to perform the severest kinds of labour, such as cutting cord-wood, working on farms, operating a flatboat, and splitting rails. He did some clerking in a grocery store, and also tried his hand at running a store for himself.

At the outbreak of the Black Hawk War in

1832, Lincoln promptly enlisted at the call of the Governor for troops to put down the uprising of the noted Indian Chief. Though but twentythree, his popularity led to his election as Captain of the Sangamon County Contingent, and brought him more widely into public notice. The sterling qualities he exhibited, and his considerate treatment of the men under his command, still further increased his growing popularity. But Lincoln was in no battle. He did not take the war seriously. He rather looked upon it as something of a joke and described it later in a semi-humorous vein.

In the same year he stood for election to the Legislature of Illinois, and was defeated, but had the consolation of knowing that, of the entire two hundred and eight votes cast in his home precinct, he received all but three. This was the only defeat he ever suffered at the hands of the people; for in his race against Stephen A. Douglas for the United States Senate he received a majority of the popular vote in the State, though with a majority of the members of the Legislature against him he was not elected.

In this first political campaign, Lincoln, always mindful of religion, issued a circular announcing his platform of principles, in which he declared that all citizens, however poor, should be afforded