regarded as an indication of innocence rather than as an evidence of criminality.

Notwithstanding the numerous and excellent maxims of criminal law the observance of which is supposed to insure the protection of innocent persons charged with the crime of murder, such innocent persons have been convicted and executed. Such an event as the taking of a human life to avenge a crime not committed is shocking to the moral sense. It will never again happen if judges will require positive proof of the corpus delicti, and after the crime is absolutely proved will follow the rule of law which disregards circumstances consistent with any hypothesis of innocence, and admits in evidence only those which are inconsistent with any theory except that of the guilt of the person charged with the crime.

CHAPTER XXXII.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A STUDY-HIS ORIGIN AND EARLY LIFE.

I SHALL undertake to write a sketch of Abraham Lincoln as he was known by me; to outline his portrait as it exists in my memory. From his first inauguration I can write from personal knowledge. His earlier life I must sketch from such materials as I have been able to collect from sources which I regard as authentic.

The Lincoln of my memory is a most attractive character and will form an instructive study for future generations. It is a subject for which my respect and my love increases with my years. If my outline shall attract the attention of the reader so that he shall fill it with all the facts and circumstances which may afterward fall under his notice, my whole object will be attained and I shall have discharged a duty to the memory of the man I loved.

I am not about to attempt another biography of Abraham Lincoln. I might do so without apology, for anything new and authentic concerning him will be welcomed by the American people. The number of those who can write of him from personal knowledge is rapidly diminishing; until for every good life of Washington there is an equally good one of Lincoln, there is little danger that the subject will be exhausted.

It would be well indeed for the youth of our time if they were as familiar with the facts of President Lincoln's life as their ancestors of the early years of the present century were with those of the life of Washington. Lives of Washington were published in country towns and exchanged by travelling peddlers for anything the farmer had to sell. Young orators in the district schools spoke their pieces from these books; they were read aloud in the family by the firelight. The name of Washington was venerated because his services were known.

I can read from my own memory words written upon it before I was eight years old: "In the History of Man we contemplate with particular satisfaction those Legislators, Heroes and Philosophers whose Wisdom, Valor and Virtue have contributed to the Happiness of the Human Species. We trace the Luminous Progress of those Excellent Beings with Secret Complacency. Our Emulation is roused while we behold them steadily pursue the Path of Rectitude in defiance of every Obstruction. We rejoice that we were of the same Species and thus Self-love becomes the Handmaid of Virtue." Such, capitals included, are the introductory observations to "Biographical Memoirs of the Illustrious Gen. George Washington," a book of one hundred and sixty pages, 24mo, published in 1813, in the mountain hamlet of Barnard, Vt., by Joseph Dix. It was published elsewhere many times. The volume is not much larger than the "New England Primer," which it resembles. It has done more to disseminate the knowledge of the great events in the life of "The Father of his Country" than the more pretentious volumes of John Marshall and Washington Irving.

The lives of Abraham Lincoln already published comprise all kinds, from the fairly good to those which are untruthful and misleading. The great work of Hay and Nicolay will always be indispensable to the student of that most important chapter of our history covered by his administration. But their volumes are rather a mine of materials than a deduction of facts, and require a more careful digest. The smaller life by Mr. Arnold is a charming biography, true as to its statements of fact. But Mr. Arnold was the associate and friend of Mr. Lincoln. How dearly he loved him his book discloses. The charm imparted to his pen by his affection is very delightful, but it sometimes leads one to distrust his impartiality.

Other lives of Lincoln may be passed without comment. He is an inadequate biographer of a great man who charges his mature age with the errors of his youth or is unable to appreciate his intellectual growth. No amount of protest will convince the impartial reader that the most reliable biographers of a public man are those who have abandoned his party and his principles and gone over into the camp of the enemy.

The writers who are responsible for the most erroneous views of the character of Abraham Lincoln are those who assert that he had a special pride in his humble origin and the poverty which repressed his early growth, and that he delighted in low and vulgar anecdote. Their ignorance is pitiable, inexcusable. He inherited a desponding temperament; his childhood except for his mother would have been cheerless; that mother died and left him desolate. There was little enough of sunshine in his youth. Up to the age of twenty-two his life had been a con

stant struggle against privation and poverty; he failed in every undertaking. His surveying instruments were sold by the sheriff on an execution for debt. He loved with all the intensity of his soul, and his love was returned by one who might have flooded his life with sunshine. She was stricken and died. He would not have been human if he had not become sad and melancholy. Despondency became almost his second nature. Great responsibilities were cast upon him which he would not evade, which he discharged with the most scrupulous fidelity. Where weaker men would have drowned their cares in dissipation, he sought a momentary escape from them in a humorous book or a sparkling story. That any form of vulgarity had any attraction for him, that he was proud of the poverty of his birth or early life, are statements never imposed upon any one who knew Abraham Lincoln.

His many-sided character cannot be estimated by ordinary rules. Men have usually attained eminence by the gradual development of qualities, sometimes promoted by advantages of position, the assistance of friends, and association with other men. Mr. Lincoln pre-eminently made himself, by intense thought, application, and good judgment. His intellectual growth was phenomenal. He reached celebrity almost at a bound. In the short space of six years the country attorney became the emancipator of a race, the preserver of the Republic, the greatest of Presidents, the foremost man of all his time. That study can scarcely fail to be profitable which gives us any better comprehension of such a character.