go about the labors of the day with all his might, displaying prodigious industry and capacity for continuous application, although he never was a fast worker. Sometimes it happened that he came without his breakfast; and then he would have in his hands a piece of cheese, or Bologna sausage, and a few crackers, bought by the way. At such times he did not speak to his partner or his friends, if any happened to be present: the tears were, perhaps, struggling into his eyes, while his pride was struggling to keep them back. Mr. Herndon knew the whole story at a glance: there was no speech between them; but neither wished the visitors to the office to witness the scene; and, therefore, Mr. Lincoln retired to the back office, while Mr. Herndon locked the front one, and walked away with the key in his pocket. In an hour or more the latter would return, and perhaps find Mr. Lincoln calm and collected; otherwise he went out again, and waited until he was so. Then the office was opened, and every thing went on as usual.

When Mr. Lincoln had a speech to write, which happened very often, he would put down each thought, as it struck him, on a small strip of paper, and, having accumulated a number of these, generally carried them in his hat or his pockets until he had the whole speech composed in this odd way, when he would sit down at his table, connect the fragments, and then write out the whole speech on consecutive sheets in a plain, legible handwriting.

His house was an ordinary two-story frame-building, with a stable and a yard: it was a bare, cheerless sort of a place. He planted no fruit or shade trees, no shrubbery or flowers. He did on one occasion set out a few rose-bushes in front of his house; but they speedily perished, or became unsightly for want of attention. Mrs. Wallace, Mrs. Lincoln's sister, undertook "to hide the nakedness" of the place by planting some flowers; but they soon withered and died. He cultivated a small garden for a single year, working in it himself; but it did not seem to prosper, and that enterprise also was abandoned. He had a horse and a cow: the one was fed and cur

ried, and the other fed and milked, by his own hand. When at home, he chopped and sawed all the wood that was used in his house. Late one night he returned home, after an absence of a week or so. His neighbor, Webber, was in bed; but, hearing an axe in use at that unusual hour, he rose to see what it meant. The moon was high; and by its light he looked down into Lincoln's yard, and there saw him in his shirt-sleeves" cutting wood to cook his supper with." Webber turned to his watch, and saw that it was one o'clock. Besides this house and lot, and a small sum of money, Mr. Lincoln had no property, except some wild land in Iowa, entered for him under warrants, received for his service in the Black Hawk War.

Mrs. Wallace thinks "Mr. Lincoln was a domestic man by nature." He was not fond of other people's children, but was extremely fond of his own: he was patient, indulgent, and generous with them to a fault. On Sundays he often took those that were large enough, and walked with them into the country, and, giving himself up entirely to them, rambled through the green fields or the cool woods, amusing and instructing them for a whole day at a time. His method of reading is thus quaintly described. "He would read, generally aloud (couldn't read otherwise), - would read with great warmth, all funny or humorous things; read Shakspeare that way. He was a sad man, an abstracted man. He would lean back, his head against the top of a rocking-chair; sit abstracted that way for minutes, twenty, thirty minutes, and all at once would burst out into a joke.”

Mrs. Col. Chapman, daughter of Dennis Hanks, and therefore a relative of Mr. Lincoln, made him a long visit previous to her marriage. "You ask me," says she, "how Mr. Lincoln acted at home. I can say, and that truly, he was all that a husband, father, and neighbor should be, kind and affectionate to his wife and child (‘Bob' being the only one they had when I was with them), and very pleasant to all around him. Never did I hear him utter an unkind word. For instance : one day he undertook to correct his child, and his wife was

determined that he should not, and attempted to take it from him; but in this she failed. She then tried tongue-lashing, but met with the same fate; for Mr. Lincoln corrected his child as a father ought to do, in the face of his wife's anger, and that, too, without even changing his countenance or making any reply to his wife.

"His favorite way of reading, when at home, was lying down on the floor. I fancy I see him now, lying full-length in the hall of his old house reading. When not engaged reading law-books, he would read literary works, and was very fond of reading poetry, and often, when he would be, or appear to be, in deep study, commence and repeat aloud some piece that he had taken a fancy to, such as the one you already have in print, and 'The Burial of Sir John Moore,' and so on. He often told laughable jokes and stories when he thought we were looking gloomy.”

Mr. Lincoln was not supremely happy in his domestic relations: the circumstances of his courtship and marriage alone made that impossible. His engagement to Miss Todd was one of the great misfortunes of his life and of hers. He realized the mistake too late; and when he was brought face to face with the lie he was about to enact, and the wrong he was about to do, both to himself and an innocent woman, he recoiled with horror and remorse. For weeks together, he was sick, deranged, and on the verge of suicide, a heavy care to his friends, and a source of bitter mortification to the unfortunate lady, whose good fame depended, in a great part, upon his constancy. The wedding garments and the marriage feast were prepared, the very hour had come when the solemn ceremony was to be performed; and the groom failed to appear! He was no longer a free agent: he was restrained, carefully guarded, and soon after removed to a distant place, where the exciting causes of his disease would be less constant and active in their operation. He recovered slowly, and at length returned to Springfield. He spoke out his feelings frankly and truly to the one person most interested in them. But he had been, from the beginning, except in the case of