out Mr. R., of Minnesota, a gentleman of a particularly round and rubicund countenance; the worthy farmer, greatly astonished, exclaimed: "Is that Old Abe? Well, I du declare! He's a better-lookin' man than I expected to see; but it does seem as if his troubles had driven him to drink."

After this evening I only saw Mr. Lincoln at two of his public receptions, when the people-or torrent of humanity — surged into the White House, and swept past him, every soul-wave mirroring clear his pale, patient face, and taking a glint from his kindly eyes. Each time I was made happy by an instant and smiling recognition and a few words of special welcome.

To pass into the presence, as one of a great crowd, even, was to receive from Mr. Lincoln a real, honest, hearty handshake, which you felt to the tips of your toes. Nowadays the official fashion is less neighborly and more perfunctory. The great man touches your fingers an instant, while looking over your shoulder for the next comer, or clutches your hand any way, pulls you forward and passes you on. You think he has said a word or two, but you are not quite sure.

Every moment that I found it possible on those occasions to linger near Mr. Lincoln, I spent in studying the face of the man on whose single life hung the destinies of a country and the redemption of a race. It was always the same impression. Under the pleasantest light of his eyes, I divined a depth of melancholy unfathomable.

Yet I recognized then, almost as clearly as I do now, the "saving grace" of those gifts of imagination and humor, which gave him temporary "surcease from sorrow," and the soul-weariness of helpless pity, through

I

poetry, the drama, and those droll "little stories," so often wisdom in homely disguise - parables of subtle significance. It takes nothing from my respect for him, as a hero and a Christian, to know that he kept on the stand by the side of his bed, volumes of his favorite humorists. When, in the dreary watches of the night, the bitter waters of his " sea of troubles" were rising to his lips, I doubt not he found the buoyant wit of "Pickwick" more potent to bear him up than the bat-wings of Young's "Night Thoughts." Doubtless there was for him more heart-lightenings in Artemus Ward than in Isaac Watts; and he may have found in the homely diet of Hosea Biglow more stimulating mental aliment than in all the philosophy of Athens or Concord. I believe that one good, hearty laugh did him more good than any number of those recitations of "O Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?" he was addicted to in his low and sentimental moods.

Not till that woful time when a tidal wave of national mourning swept across the continent, did I look again on the face of Abraham Lincoln. It was at Philadelphia

one of the stations in the great funeral progress. He lay in state, in Independence Hall, where one could almost believe that he had a double guard of honor, one invisible to us the august shades of men whose patriotic act made that chamber glorious forever.

Accorded a private view, I was able to remain as long as I could bear to stay beside the casket, gazing down on what seemed to me a dread simulacrum of the face of our great friend - so unlike was it, though so like. The color was not the pallor I remembered, but a sort of ashen gray; the mouth looked stern, and then, the total eclipse of those benignant eyes! People said the face

was "peaceful"; but it was an awful peace, there remained such touching shadows of mortal sorrow, struggle and strain. It was as though the soul, sunk deep beyond deep in God's rest, had left in its garment of flesh the perfect mould of its mortal cares, its piteous yearnings, its unspeakable weariness.

I have always pitied those who have only such recollections of Abraham Lincoln, and have been fervently thankful that while he yet lived I looked on that now historic figure and found it heroic in its grand ungainliness; on that worn and rugged face, and found it both lovable and impressive; that my hand has been grasped, in greeting and farewell, by the hand that performed the grandest work of the century; that my eyes have gazed full into those sad, prophetic eyes, whose tired lids were pressed down at last by the long-prayed-for Angel of Peace.

And I am thankful that it was my privilege to know some of his greatest generals, and those splendid aids of his, the "war governors" of the North and West, and also the faithful statesmen and patriots, who here at the Capital "upheld his hands"-Stanton, Chase and Seward, Henry Wilson, Hannibal Hamlin, Thaddeus Stevens, Joseph Holt, all gone - the type gone!

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"O, woe is me,

To have seen what I have seen see what I see!"

WASHINGTON, March 19th, 1895.

LINCOLN AS A STORY-TELLER.

BY GEN. EGBERT L. VIELE.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN was sometimes criticised for the stories he used to tell. The broadness of these stories, it may be said, came from the atmosphere of the Western country, where it was necessary to give a little spice to an anecdote in order to attract attention. Mr. Lincoln always used with great effect any anecdote which he possessed for the purpose of enforcing and exemplifying a higher form of argument and impressing a fact upon the minds of his hearers.

Few people understand precisely the condition of Western life. They are crude and rude, though fast becoming otherwise. In Lincoln's time it was the life of the pioneer that is struggling with nature; and while people were working to obtain the food necessary for their absolute existence, there was little time for the cultivation of the graces and for the refinement of the intellect. So we must look at that country from the point of view of development.

In a broad sense American civilization is divided into three distinct lines. There is the civilization of the Atlantic coast, the earliest civilization, which was simply a reflex of European civilization. The tone and character of public affairs came from men who were familiar with public affairs in Europe, and had a knowledge

of and an acquaintance with many of the statesmen of Europe.

The civilization of the valley of the Mississippi is distinct from this. It is purely an American civilization. The people of the valley of the Mississippi thought little and cared less for the settlers on the Atlantic or for the European nations. They lived in a world of their own, a vast, productive region, the most remarkable of its kind on this continent.

The civilization of the Pacific slope was that of adventurers of all kinds, tinged with the characteristics of the Mexican and the vices of the Mongolian who became mixed with it. So it will be seen that there are three distinct forms of life to be mingled together in the future of American civilization.

Abraham Lincoln was the product of the pure American civilization, just as Grant was, just as Sherman was. The valley of the Mississippi has given us a large number of great marvellously great-men; great in intellect and great in stature. In fact, the State of Kentucky alone has furnished us with a large complement of great men capable of conducting the affairs of the country for a country if there were no other men competent to do so.

Kentucky is, physically, the Greece of America, just as the Hellenic Peninsula is the Greece of Europe; and from that State we have received already a vast amount of intellectual and physical development superior, in many respects, to that which has come from any other part of the country. During the Civil War there was a measurement made of the heads and bodies of the soldiers from the different sections of the country, and it was found that the Kentucky soldiers were larger in bone