turned the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue we encountered an immense crowd gathered about the building. We quickly reversed our muskets, and, using the butts of them, freely forced our way to the door of the theatre, where we met Major Hay, then the private secretary of President Lincoln. He requested me to make a passage through the crowd, so that the President might be carried across the street to a Mr. Peterson's house, where he died the next morning. This we quickly accomplished, and soon the bleeding form of Abraham Lincoln was carried past us, and while the tears rolled down our cheeks, there was not one of our number but would have willingly shed his own blood could it but have saved the life of him we all loved so well. So ended the career of Abraham Lincoln, and from all civilized nations on the face of the earth rose a cry of sympathy and horror; sympathy for his death and horror for the dark crime that caused it!

LINCOLN AS A RHETORICAL ARTIST.

HOW HE LEARNED TO DEMONSTRATE.

BY. AMOS W. PEARSON,

EDITOR OF THE NORWICH, CONN., "BULLETIN."

THE visit of Abraham Lincoln to Norwich on March 9th, 1860, is one of the memorable events of the century. It was subsequent to his great political debate with Douglas, and just prior to his nomination for the Presidency. The irrepressible conflict, which soon culminated in the Civil War, was at its height, and as a free-State champion against the extension of slavery to the Territories, Lincoln was admired and respected. The announcement that he was to make a campaign address in Norwich was a signal for one of the greatest and most enthusiastic public gatherings ever held in this place. The old town hall was packed, and concerning that speech, the Rev. John Gulliver, D.D., said: "I learned more of the art of public speaking in listening to Mr. Lincoln's address than I could have learned from a whole course of lectures on rhetoric."

The late Rev. Dr. Gulliver was so interested in Lincoln and his masterly address that he ventured to ask him where he was educated, and it was then that he replied:

"Well, as to education, the newspapers are correct. I

never went to school more than six months in my life. I can say this: That among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I do not think I ever got angry at anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings.

"I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over; until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it north and bounded it south, and bounded it east and bounded it west.

"But your question reminds me of a bit of education which I am bound in honesty to mention. In the course of my law reading I constantly came upon the word demonstrate I thought, at first, that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I said to myself, 'What do I mean when I demonstrate, more than when I reason or prove?' I consulted Webster's Dictionary. That told of 'certain proof,' 'proof beyond the probability of doubt'; but I could form no sort of idea what sort of proof that was. I thought a great many things were proved beyond the possibility of a doubt, without recourse to any such reasoning as I understood demonstration to be,

"I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better results. You might as well have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said, 'Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means '; and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there until I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what demonstrate meant, and went back to my law studies."

This bit of autobiography opens to view one quality of Lincoln which answers for his strong self-training, his growth and the simplicity of style which gave him power.

It was this visit to "the Rose of New England" which introduced "Honest Old Abe" to our people, and created an abiding interest in his welfare and a love for him that has never waned.

TYPE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

THE DESTROYER OF SLAVERY—ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

1865-1895.

BY F. B. SANBORN,

AUTHOR OF "LIFE OF JOHN BROWN."

THE flight of time, which in thirty years effaces flourishing reputations of American dignitaries, has only enlarged our view and increased our admiration of Lincoln the Emancipator. Nature warns us against those eager reformers and devotees of their own fame who "run before they are sent "; but no such imputation rests upon the sad magnanimity of our martyred President of 1865. Under the guidance of Heaven, and, as it were, against his own hardly won consent, he became the destroyer of that atrocious evil- American slavery. In vain might he wish to lighten the stroke; it fell but the more fatal from his delay. Yet, in its death agony, the monster had strength to slay its most generous foe.

In his early career of laborious obscurity, as well as in his conspicuous station, Lincoln was the type of the American people. In what other land could he have risen so high without betraying or ignoring the institutions that enabled him to rise? But power in his hands was wielded with a magnanimity unequalled, and wellnigh without personal aims. "This way of thinking,"