if possible, what his education had been. One day he asked Mr. Lincoln how he became interested in the law. "It was Blackstone's Commentaries' that did it," said Mr. Lincoln, and then he related how he first happened on the books. "I was keeping store in New Salem, when one day a man who was migrating to the West drove up with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it and paid him, I think, half a dollar. Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all about it. Sometime after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel and emptied its contents upon the floor. I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone's " Commentaries." I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time, for during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I read " this he said with unusual emphasis "the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them."

Blackstone whetted his appetite for more law. Later, when he had become a lawyer, a politician, a man of family, the love of books remained, and he often read late into the night after a hard day at the bar, trying to make up, he said, for that chance at an education which he did not have as a boy.

Lincoln began to write almost as soon as to read. Many doggerels have been preserved that he scrawled in his early exercise books, such as

Good boys who to their books apply,
Will all be great men by and bye.

There are also many well-authenticated stories of attempts at essays and poetry. Some of these boyish performances even

found their way into local papers, and not a few were preserved by his family and have been published by his earliest biographers. Of course they are crude, but they all show a sense of the value of words and an evident pleasure in what Schurz calls the "comely phrase." They are never meaningless. They are never flat. They show always that the writer had an idea of his own, and that though he might work it out blunderingly, he nevertheless had a real feeling of the possibilities in his medium.

Through all the hard years of his early manhood he stuck to his effort to express himself by writing. He must have been nearly twenty years old when he began to feel the need of a knowledge of grammar, to realize that these blocks out of which he had been building sentences intuitively and imitatively, governed only by his pleasure in them and by the unconscious influence of his reading, were really subject to certain laws. He decided he must know these laws, learn how to put words together scientifically. The familiar story of Lincoln's hunt for a grammar, of his impassioned study of it before a fire of stumps by night after his long day's work, is at once one of the most pathetic and most inspiring in the history of his intellectual life.

By the time Lincoln was twenty-three years of age, he felt himself sufficiently master of his medium to put out his first public document, an address to the people of Sangamon County, Illinois, offering himself as a candidate for the office of representative to the General Assembly of the state. This document is remarkable for its directness. Its author plunges at once into the subjects which he supposes most interesting to his constituents, and states his views in English which bears all the characteristics of his style twenty-five years later.

From 1832 on, throughout the rest of his life, we have a steady series of addresses called out by the events in which he was most deeply interested. In addition to elaborate arguments

such as these are, Lincoln's writings contain several remarkable short addresses for special occasions; preeminent among these is the Gettysburg speech.

He also wrote in the course of his life several lectures on subjects quite out of politics. A very good temperance lecture is in this list, as well as an address on inventions. But while the bulk of Lincoln's work is in the form of addresses, he by no means confined himself to this species of composition. At various times in his life he tried his hand at essays, which have been lost; he even wrote occasional verse, a little of which has been preserved; and from the testimony of his associates we know that ideas for stories sometimes flitted through his head.

In Lincoln's literary output nothing is better than his leers. For instance, his letters to his constituents, through which for many years he did most of his electioneering, form a series of political documents as distinguished for their quaint phraseology and humor as for their frankness and shrewdness; and those letters in which he gave counsel to friends must eventually become classic.

Putting together all his writings, addresses, lectures, public and private letters, and fugitive expression, the bulk of work which resulted in the course of his life is considerable. His complete works, edited by Nicolay and Hay, contain fully 750,000 words.

Unquestionably the most important of Lincoln's literary work is the series of speeches made between 1854 and 1865, in which he developed his arguments against the extension of slavery, for the preservation of the Union and in favor of emancipation. The most familiar of these are the powerful replies to Douglas in 1858, but they are by no means all which are worth attention The speech made in 1856, when he publicly severed his connection with the old Whig party and joined the newly founded Republican organization, is one of the most vigorous and eloquent he ever delivered. It is doubtful if any speech of his

whole career produced such an extraordinary effect. So moved were his audience that the very reporters forgot to take notes, and it was supposed until recently that no notes of it had been preserved. It thus became known all over Illinois as Lincoln's "Lost Speech." It is only within a few years that a report of this speech has been found.

It is doubtful if any one who did not live through the exciting decade before the war, or who has not made some special study of Lincoln's life, realizes the effect of these speeches. They really introduced him to the nation. Before that he had been an unknown man. Even when he began to debate with Douglas in 1858 he was so little known and appreciated that his friends in Illinois were afraid of a fiasco. They could not believe that this great, gaunt, friendly man, with his simple ways and his modest air, could match the most brilliant and popular orator of the day. But as the debate went on, it became clear to them that Lincoln was the stronger. They began to ask each other if it was possible that Lincoln, whom they had known all their lives, with whom they rode the circuit, told stories, and played practical jokes, could be a great man. They began to receive letters from the East, "Who is this Lincoln ?" Do you realize," wrote one great man of the day to the chairman of the Republican committee, “that no greater speeches on public questions have been made in the history of our country,.that his knowledge of the question is profound, his logic unanswerable, his style inimitable?" Before the campaign was over, his friends all made up their minds that Lincoln was, in fact, a great man.

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There was so strong an interest in him in the East, awakened by the debates with Douglas, that he was invited to speak at Cooper Union, the greatest compliment that could be paid to a public speaker in that day.

Mr. Lincoln's audience was a notable one even for New York. It included William Cullen Bryant, who introduced him, Horace Greeley, David Dudley Field, and many more well-known

men of the day. It is doubtful if even Lincoln's best friends did not fear that his queer manner and quaint diction might amuse people so much that they would fail to catch the weight of his logic. But to their surprise there was universal enthusiasm over the intellectual and literary quality of the address. Where has this man learned his logic and his English? the audience asked. The question was a proper one, for these antislavery speeches of Lincoln are one of the greatest intellectual feats as well as one of the most distinguished literary performances any American has achieved. To begin with, the man was saturated with his subject, the very essential of any great literary performance. He had studied it, handled it, lived with it, until when he came to present it he constructed an argument which was practically flawless. He was like a master builder putting up the framework of a great building. Every timber fits, every nail goes into the exact spot where it is needed, and no useless nail is driven. It is a strong, wellproportioned, sound framework. Now the flawless argument is the very life of a piece of literature, for it is that which makes the appeal to the intellect. Let the argument be incomplete, shifty, interlaid with shams or tricks, and the intellect will not give its complete assent. The thing is not "convincing," we say to-day. Now Lincoln was always convincing in his antislavery addresses and letters. So sound was he that no trick of oratory, no subtility of argument, no brutality of attack on Douglas's part could surprise him in the debates. His later work was equally strong in its logic.

Had not Lincoln worked as steadily and as hard on his expression as he did on his argument, the effect of his antislavery speeches and letters would have been less immediate and less general. But he had constant thought of his form. He wanted to be" clear," he said. Unless he could be easily understood he knew he could not easily persuade, and it was for this he struggled throughout his public life, with the result that