wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was a sign that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.'”

His poor wife joined him in his fatalistic dreams. She was seer enough to say that this vision meant his re-election and his tragic death. And did he not believe it? When he entered the White House he lacked "the one thing needful" to correct the dark ways of his life, and make him a model to his race. He had erected his own standards, and if he did not rely implicitly upon them, he did not take to those of other men. Men were only his instruments; among them he had no models. But he was not a man without a heart, and so prominent did his heart acts become during his best days (the period in which his irreligion and selfishness largely melted away), that it has been a question among men whether his heart or his cold intellect shaped his conduct as President.

The matter of gratitude is a thing about which the many-sided world has given itself much trouble, and many men have held to the notion that Mr. Lincoln was without this somewhat exaggerated virtue. He liked or loved mankind as a whole, or in the abstract much more than in the individual. He was tender and gentle without talking of love. He expressed his own general trait most truly when he said he did what he did "with malice toward none, and with charity for all;" and in the following words gave all of his beautiful philosophy of gratitude :

he

"My friends you owe me no gratitude for what I have done; and I, I may say, owe you no gratitude for what you have done; just as, in a sense, we owe no gratitude to the men who have fought our battles for us. I trust that this has all been for us all a work of duty."

Gratitude he now held was due to the Great Giver of all gifts. To do what was just and right and best and fit was reasonably to be exacted and expected of man, and in the doing should he find his delight and reward.

What was true and good he came to venerate intensely, if he did not always do so, and this was one of his distinguishing traits. And akin to it was his strong sense of right and justice. Mere friendship and all ordinary considerations gave way before these. The title of "Honest Abe" he deserved, and, perhaps, he esteemed it more than all else. To have earned this title must go far in the estimation of the world, and on the pages of history, in fixing his name among the few who may justly be called "the great, the wise, and the good.

CHAPTER XXVII.

MR. LINCOLN'S RELIGION-LOOK AT THIS MAN OF SORROW-WHAT VERDICT ?

IT

is not difficult for an ordinarily well-balanced man to be good to others when he has more than he wants for himself. A full man, like a full horse, may readily be generous. A starving man is not greatly different from other animals under like circumstances. The laws of mental and spiritual life are upon the same general footing as the physical, and are explained by them. Genuine goodness is not so circumscribed, nor is selfishness so much diffused, as many suppose. In the first successful stages of Mr. Lincoln's life he seemed to doubt, at times, whether any of his acts were unselfish. When he put himself to great trouble to relieve a suffering animal or man, it was to relieve a pang or distress in himself caused by the pain of the other. This he thought was selfishness. misguided men. This is sophisms of the sophists. in pain or misfortune, and he is himself disturbed, pained, or his sympathies are aroused. Were he purely selfish this result could not follow. He would say, This is not my business; I am proof against

So have thought other one of the most foolish One man looks at another

things of this kind. When he has felt at all, and knows that he has, he has put the seal of falsehood on the theory of selfishness. If he puts forth his hand to give aid, he relieves an unbidden pang in himself, one to which selfishness could not have given birth. To the other a benefit follows, and the delight is mutual. Would not a purely selfish creature have power to relieve himself of pain, or the uneasiness of sympathy, by taking some other course, one giving him no trouble, work, or self-denial? Should he not say, Let the plant lie; if it droops and dies there are more flowers to brighten the path which I am traveling; the lame brute or the unfortunate man, what are their sorrows to me? The pang disappears, does it not? Is it not lost in the forgetfulness and easy philosophy of selfishness? Is an act done for a purpose a selfish one? Is a motive the necessary sign of selfishness? What folly! The character of the motive is only a matter of question. The pain in one arising from sight of pain in another is genuine sympathy; otherwise it would not be pain. Selfishness does not torture itself. It courts no sor

row, admits none. The hand extended in relief is impelled by the motive to do good, to serve another. Selfishness may have no hand in the act. Selfishness is not bound to act in that way. If it had a pang it could and would choose another course for its relief, one in harmony with its nature. If it merely assumed a pang without its real existence, in the hope or desire of ultimate sole self-benefits, then there would be no question about the motive or the

character of the deed, and we would enter the realm of undisputed, unmitigated selfishness.

There are no overburdened or oppressed individuals in the providence of God.

There are no favored individuals in the providence of God.

On these two great axiomatic propositions Mr. Lincoln stumbled all his life. The reverse of these he took to be true, some way, notwithstanding his single devotion to what he deemed principles of justice and right. He considered himself a man of sorrow. The weight of his father's hand was always on his back. The ignorance and poverty of his parents seemed to be a burden to him in after life. His love affairs drew him into fits of insanity, from which he recovered with additional burdens on his shoulders. And finally he felt that the fates had driven him into a marriage which he could not and must not avoid, and in this he deemed himself doomed to walk in a cloud of sadness.

These unmanly whims diseased his mind; and when he viewed himself in a political aspect he only got back double reflections from his mirror of sorrows. Fate had here, too, fixed upon him a burden. which he could not and would not shake off, and which must land him ultimately in the darkness of despair. He was the servant of the people, and in a great struggle, a decree and principle of fate, he was to die for them. In him, bodily, the great and "irrepressible conflict" was first waged. The people were his instruments. He was the central figure in