Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Hearing of this case, Professor Pupin induced the gentleman to allow him to attempt a photograph of the hand. He used a Crookes tube. The distance from the tube to the plate was only five inches, and the hand lay between. After waiting fifty minutes the plate was examined. Not only did every bone of the hand show with beautiful distinctness, but each one of the forty shot was to be seen almost as plainly as if it lay there on the table; and, most remarkable of all, a number of shot were seen through the bones of the fingers, showing that the bones were transparent to the lead.

In making this picture, Professor Pupin excited his tube by means of a powerful Holtz machine, thus following Dr. Morton in the substitution of statical electricity for the more common induction coil.

Professor Pupin sees no reason why the whole skeleton of the human body should not be shown completely in a photograph as soon as sufficiently powerful bulbs can be obtained. He thinks that it would be possible to make Crookes tubes two feet in diameter instead of a few inches, as at present.

Thomas A. Edison has also been devoting himself, with his usual energy, to experiments with the Röntgen rays, and announces confidently that in the near future he will be able to photograph the human brain, through the heavy bones of the skull, and perhaps even to get a shadow picture showing the human skeleton through the tissues of the body.

THE HOUSEHOLDERS.

BY "Q,"

AUTHOR OF "DEAD MAN'S ROCK," "THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF," ETC.

I will say this--speaking as accurately as a man may, so long afterwards--that when first I spied the house it put no desire in me but just to give thanks.

For conceive my case. It was near midnight by this; and ever since dusk I had been tracking the naked moors a-foot, in the teeth of as vicious a nor'wester as ever drenched a man to the skin, and then blew the cold home to his marrow. My clothes were sodden; my coat-tails flapped with a noise like pistol shots; my boots squeaked as I went. Overhead the October moon was in her last quarter, and might have been a slice of finger-nail for all the light she afforded. Two-thirds of the time the wrack blotted her out altogether; and I, with my stick clipped tight under my arm-pit, eyes puckered up, and head bent like a butting ram's, but a little aslant, had to keep my wits agog to distinguish the glimmer of the road from the black heath to right and left. For three hours I had met neither man nor man's dwelling, and (for all I knew) was desperately lost. Indeed, at the cross roads, two miles back, there had been nothing for me but to choose the way that kept the wind on my face, and it gnawed me like a dog.

Mainly to allay the stinging of my eyes, I pulled up at last, turned right-about face, leant back against the blast with a hand on my hat, and surveyed the blackness I had traversed. It was at this instant that, far away to the left, a point of light caught my notice, faint but steady; and at once I felt sure it burnt in the window of a house. "The house," thought I, "is a good mile off, beside the other road, and the light must have been an inch over my hat-brim for the last half hour," for my head had been sloped that way. This reflection--that on so wide a moor I had come near missing the information I wanted (and perhaps a supper) by one inch--sent a strong thrill down my back.

I cut straight across the heather towards the light, risking quags and pitfalls. Nay, so heartening was the chance to hear a fellow-creature's voice that I broke into a run, skipping over the stunted gorse that cropped up here and there, and dreading every moment to see the light quenched. "Suppose it burns in an upper window, and the family is going to bed, as would be likely at this hour"--the apprehension kept my eyes fixed on the bright spot, to the frequent scandal of my legs, that within five minutes were stuck full of gorse-prickles.

But the light did not go out, and soon a flicker of moonlight gave me a glimpse of the house's outline. It proved to be a deal more imposing than I looked for--the outline, in fact, of a tall-square barrack with a cluster of chimneys at either end, like ears, and a high wall, topped by the roofs of some outbuildings, concealing the lower windows. There was no gate in this wall, and presently I guessed the reason. I was approaching the place from behind, and the light came from a back window on the first floor.

The faintness of the light also was explained by this time. It shone behind a drab-colored blind, and in shape resembled the stem of a wine-glass, broadening out at the foot--an effect produced by the half-drawn curtains within. I came to a halt, waiting for the next ray of moonlight. At the same moment a rush of wind swept over the chimney-stacks, and on the wind there seemed to ride a human sigh.

On this last point I may err. The gust had passed some seconds before I caught myself detecting this peculiar note, and trying to disengage it from the natural chords of the storm. From the next gust it was absent. And then, to my dismay, the light faded from the window.

I was half-minded to call out when it appeared again, this time in two windows--those next on the right to that where it had shone before. Almost at once it increased in brilliance, as if the person who carried it from the smaller room to the larger were lighting more candles; and now the illumination was strong enough to make fine gold threads of the rain that fell within its radiance, and fling two shafts of warm yellow over the coping of the back wall into the night. During the minute or more that I stood watching, no shadow fell on either blind.

Between me and the wall ran a ditch, into the black obscurity of which the ground at my feet broke sharply away. Setting my back to the storm again, I followed the lip of this ditch around the wall's angle. Here was shelter, and here the ditch seemed to grow shallower. Not wishing, however, to mistake a bed of nettles or any such pitfall for solid earth, I kept pretty wide as I went on. The house was dark on this side, and the wall, as before, had no opening. Close beside the next angle grew a mass of thick gorse bushes, and pushing through these I found myself suddenly on a sound high road, with the wind tearing at me as furiously as ever.

But here was the front; and I now perceived that the surrounding wall advanced some way before the house, so as to form a narrow curtilage. So much of it, too, as faced the road had been whitewashed; which made it an easy matter to find the gate. But as I laid hand on its latch, I had a surprise.

A line of paving-stones led from the gate to the heavy porch; and along the wet surface of these fell a streak of light from the front door, which stood ajar.

That a door should remain six inches open on such a night was astonishing enough, until I entered the court and found it was as still as a room, owing to the high wall, and doubtless the porch gave additional protection. But looking up and assuring myself that all the rest of _façade_ was black as ink, I wondered at the inmates who could be thus careless of their property.

It was here that my professional instincts received the first jog. Abating the sound of my feet on the paving-stones, I went up to the door and pushed it softly. It opened without noise.

I stepped into a fair-sized hall of modern build, paved with red tiles and lit with a small hanging lamp. To right and left were doors leading to the ground-floor rooms. Along the wall by my shoulder ran a line of pegs, on which hung half a dozen hats and great coats, every one of clerical shape; and full in front of me a broad staircase ran up, with a staring Brussels carpet, the colors and pattern of which I can recall as well as to-day's breakfast. Under this staircase was set a stand full of walking-sticks, and a table littered with gloves, brushes, a hand-bell, a riding-crop, one or two dog-whistles, and a bed-room candle, with tinder-box beside it. This, with one notable exception, was all the furniture.

The exception--which turned me cold--was the form of a yellow mastiff dog, curled on a mat beneath the table. The arch of his back was towards me, and one forepaw lay over his nose in a natural posture of sleep. I leant back on the wainscoting, with my eyes tightly fixed on him, and my thoughts flying back, with something of regret, to the storm I had come through.

But a man's habits are not easily denied. At the end of three minutes the dog had not moved, and I was down on the doormat unlacing my soaked boots. Slipping them off, and taking them in my left hand, I stood up, and tried a step towards the stairs, with eyes alert for any movement of the mastiff; but he never stirred. I was glad enough, however, on reaching the stairs, to find them newly built and the carpet thick. Up I went with a glance at every step for the table which now hid the brute's form from me, and never a creak did I wake out of that staircase till I was almost at the first landing, when my toe caught a loose stair-rod, and rattled it in a way that stopped my heart for a moment, and then set it going in double-quick time.

I stood still, with a hand on the rail. My eyes were now on a level with the floor of the landing, out of which branched two passages--one by my right hand, the other to the left, at the foot of the next flight, so placed that I was gazing down the length of it. And almost at the end there fell a parallelogram of light across it from an open door.

A man who has once felt it knows there is only one kind of silence that can fitly be called "dead." This is only to be found in a great house at midnight. I declare that for a few seconds after I rattled the stair-rod you might have cut the silence with a knife. If the house held a clock it ticked inaudibly.

Upon this silence, at the end of a minute, broke a light sound--the _clink, clink_ of a decanter on the rim of a wine-glass. It came from the room where the light was.

Now, perhaps it was that the very thought of liquor put warmth into my cold bones. It is certain that all of a sudden I straightened my back, took the remaining stairs at two strides, and walked down the passage, as bold as brass, with out caring a jot for the noise I made.

In the doorway I halted. The room was long, lined for the most part with books bound in what they call "divinity calf," and littered with papers like a barrister's table on assize day. Before the fireplace, where a few coals burned sulkily, was drawn a leathern elbow chair, and beside it, on the corner of a writing-table, were set an unlit candle and a pile of manuscripts. At the opposite end of the room a curtained door led (I guessed) to the chamber that I had first seen illuminated. All this I took in with the tail of my eye, while staring straight in front, where, in the middle of a great square of carpet between me and the windows, was a table with a red cloth upon it. On this cloth were a couple of wax candles, lit, in silver stands, a tray, and a decanter three parts full of brandy. And between me and the table stood a man.

He stood sideways, leaning a little back, as if to keep his shadow off the threshold, and looked at me over his left shoulder--a bald, grave man, slightly under the common height, with a long clerical coat of preposterous fit hanging loosely from his shoulders, a white cravat, black breeches, and black stockings. His feet were loosely thrust into carpet-slippers. I judged his age at fifty, or thereabouts; but his face rested in the shadow, and I could only note a pair of eyes, very small and alert, twinkling above a large expanse of cheek.

He was lifting a wine-glass from the table at the moment when I appeared, and it trembled now in his right hand. I heard a spilt drop or two fall on the carpet, and this was all the evidence he showed of discomposure.

Setting the glass back, he felt in his breast-pocket for a handkerchief, failed to find one, and rubbed his hands together to get the liquor off his fingers.

"You startled me," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, turning his eyes upon me, as he lifted his glass again, and emptied it. "How did you find your way in?"

"By the front door," said I, wondering at his unconcern.

He nodded his head slowly.

"Ah! yes; I forgot to lock it. You came to steal, I suppose?"

"I came because I lost my way. I've been travelling this God-forsaken moor since dusk--"

"With your boots in your hand," he put in quietly.

"I took them off out of respect to the yellow dog you keep."

"He lies in a very natural attitude--eh?"

"You don't tell me he was _stuffed_!"

The old man's eyes beamed a contemptuous pity.

"You are indifferently sharp, my dear sir, for a housebreaker. Come in. Set down those convicting boots, and don't drip pools of water in the very doorway, of all places. If I must entertain a burglar, I prefer him tidy."

He walked to the fire, picked up a poker, and knocked the coals into a blaze. This done, he turned round on me with the poker still in his hand. The serenest gravity sat on his large, pale features.

"Why have I done this?" he asked.

"I suppose to get possession of the poker."

"Quite right. May I inquire your next move?"

"Why," said I, feeling in my tail pocket, "I carry a pistol."

"Which I suppose to be damp?"

"By no means. I carry it, as you see, in an oil-cloth case."

He stopped, and laid the poker carefully in the fender.

"That is a stronger card than I possess. I might urge that by pulling the trigger you would certainly alarm the house and the neighborhood, and put a halter round your neck. I say, I _might_ urge this, and assume you to be an intelligent auditor. But it strikes me as safer to assume you capable of using a pistol with effect at three paces. With what might happen subsequently I will not pretend to be concerned. It is sufficient that I dislike the notion of being perforated. The fate of your neck--" He waved a hand. "Well, I have known you for just five minutes, and feel but moderate interest in your neck. As for the inmates of this house, it will refresh you to hear that there are none. I have lived here two years with a butler and a female cook, both of whom I dismissed yesterday at a moment's notice for conduct which I will not shock your ears by explicitly naming. Suffice it to say, I carried them off yesterday to my parish church, two miles away, married them, and dismissed them in the vestry without characters. I wish you had known that butler--but excuse me; with the information I have supplied, you ought to find no difficulty in fixing the price you will take to clear out of my house instanter."

"Sir," I answered, "I have held a pistol at one or two heads in my time; but never at one stuffed with nobler discretion. Your chivalry does not, indeed, disarm me, but prompts me to desire more of your acquaintance. I have found a gentleman, and must sup with him before I make terms."

The address seemed to please him. He shuffled across the room to a sideboard, and produced a plate of biscuits, another of almonds and dried raisins, a glass and two decanters.

"Sherry and Madeira," he said. "There is also a cold pie in the larder, if you care for it."

"A biscuit will serve," I replied. "To tell the truth, I'm more for the bucket than the manger, as the grooms say; and, by your leave, the brandy you were testing just now is more to my mind than wine."

"There is no water handy."

"There was plenty out of doors to last me with this bottle."

I pulled over a chair, and laid my pistol on the table, and held out the glass for him to fill. Having done so, he helped himself to a glass and a chair, and sat down facing me.

"I was talking, just now, of my late butler," he began, with a sip at his brandy. "Has it struck you that, when confronted with moral delinquency, I am apt to let my indignation get the better of me?"

"Not at all," I answered heartily, refilling my glass.

It appeared that another reply would have pleased him better.

"H'm. I was hoping that, perhaps, I had visited his offence too strongly. As a clergyman, you see, I was bound to be severe; but upon my word, sir, since he went I have felt like a man who has lost a limb."

He drummed with his fingers on the cloth for a few moments, and went on:

"One has a natural disposition to forgive butlers--Pharaoh, for instance, felt it. There hovers around butlers that peculiar atmosphere which Shakespeare noticed as encircling kings, an atmosphere in which common ethics lose their pertinence. But mine was a rare bird--a black swan among butlers. He was more than a butler: he was a quick and brightly-gifted man. Of the accuracy of his taste, and the unusual scope of his endeavor, you will be able to form some opinion when I assure you he modelled himself upon _me_."

I bowed over my brandy.

"I am a scholar; yet I employed him to read aloud to me, and derived pleasure from his intonation. I talk as a scholar; yet he learned to answer me in language as precise as my own. My cast-off garments fitted him not more irreproachably than did my amenities of manner. Divest him of his tray, and you would find his mode of entering a room hardly distinguishable from my own--the same urbanity, the same alertness of carriage, the same superfine deference towards the weaker sex. All--all my idiosyncrasies I saw reflected in this my mirror; and can you doubt that I was gratified? He was my _alter ego_--which, by the way, makes it the more extraordinary that it should have been necessary to marry him to the cook."

"Look here," I broke in; "you want a butler."

"Oh, you really grasp that fact, do you?" he retorted.

"And you wish to get rid of me as soon as may be."

"I hope there is no impoliteness in complimenting you on your discernment."

"Your two wishes," said I, "may be reconciled. Let me cease to be your burglar, and let me continue here as your butler."

He leant back, spreading out the fingers of each hand as if the table's edge was a harpsichord, and he stretching octaves upon it.

"Believe me," I went on, "you might do worse. I have been a demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, in my time, and retain some Greek and Latin. I'll undertake to read the Fathers with an accent that shall not offend you. My knowledge of wine is none the worse for having been cultivated in other men's cellars. Moreover, you shall engage the ugliest cook in Christendom, so long as I'm your butler. I've taken a liking to you--that's flat--and I apply for the post."

"I give forty pounds a year," said he.

"And I'm cheap at that price."

He filled up his glass, looking up at me while he did so with the air of one digesting a problem. From first to last his face was grave as a judge's.

"We are too impulsive, I think," was his answer, after a minute's silence. "And your speech smacks of the amateur. You say, 'Let me cease to be your burglar, and let me be your butler.' The mere aspiration is respectable; but a man might as well say, 'Let me cease to write poems; let me paint pictures.' And truly, sir, you impressed me as no expert in your present trade, but a journeyman-housebreaker, if I may say so."

"On the other hand," I argued, "consider the moderation of my demands; that alone should convince you of my desire to turn over a new leaf. I ask for a month's trial; if, at the end of that time, I don't suit, you shall say so, and I'll march from your door with nothing in my pocket but my month's wages. Be hanged, sir! but when I reflect on the amount you'll have to pay to get me to face to-night's storm again, you seem to be getting off dirt-cheap!" cried I, slapping my palm on the table.

"Ah, if you had only known Adolphus!" he exclaimed.

Now, the third glass of clean spirits has always a deplorable effect on me. It turns me from bright to black, from lightness of spirits to extreme sulkiness. I have done more wickedness over this third tumbler than in all the other states of comparative inebriety within my experience. So now I glowered at my companion and rapped out a curse.

"Look here, I don't want to hear any more of Adolphus, and I've a pretty clear notion of the game you're playing. You want to make me drunk, and you're ready to sit prattling there till I drop under the table."

"Do me the favor to remember that you came, and are staying, at your own invitation. As for the brandy, I would remind you that I suggested a milder drink. Try some Madeira."

He handed me the decanter, as he spoke, and I poured out a glass.

"Madeira!" said I, taking a gulp. "Ugh! it's the commonest Marsala!"

I had no sooner said the words than he rose up, and stretched a hand gravely across to me.

"I hope you'll shake it," he said; "though, as a man who after three glasses of neat spirit can distinguish between Madeira and Marsala, you have every right to refuse me. Two minutes ago you offered to become my butler, and I demurred. I now beg you to repeat that offer. Say the word, and I employ you gladly; you shall even have the second decanter (which contains genuine Madeira) to take to bed with you."

We shook hands on our bargain, and catching up a candlestick, he led the way from the room.

Picking up my boots, I followed him along the passage and down the silent staircase. In the hall he paused to stand on tiptoe, and turn up the lamp, which was burning low. As he did so, I found time to fling a glance at my old enemy, the mastiff. He lay as I had first seen him--a stuffed dog, if ever there was one. "Decidedly," thought I, "my wits are to seek, to-night;" and with the same, a sudden suspicion made me turn to my conductor, who had advanced to the left-hand door, and was waiting for me, with hand on the knob.

"One moment," I said; "this is all very pretty, but how am I to know you're not sending me to bed while you fetch in all the countryside to lay me by the heels?"

"I'm afraid," was his answer, "you must be content with my word, as a gentleman, that never, to-night or hereafter, will I breathe a syllable about the circumstances of your visit. However, if you choose, we will return upstairs."

"No; I'll trust you," said I; and he opened the door.

It led into a broad passage, paved with slate, upon which three or four rooms opened. He paused by the second, and ushered me into a sleeping-chamber which, though narrow, was comfortable enough--a vast improvement, at any rate, on the mumper's lodgings I had been used to for many months past.

"You can undress here," he said. "The sheets are aired, and if you'll wait a moment I'll fetch a nightshirt--one of my own."

"Sir, you heap coals of fire on me."

"Believe me that for ninety-nine of your qualities I do not care a tinker's curse: but as a man who, after three tumblers of neat brandy, can tell Marsala from Madeira you are to be taken care of."

He shuffled away, but came back in a couple of minutes with the nightshirt.

"Good-night," he called to me, flinging it in at the door; and without giving me time to return the wish, went his way upstairs.

Now it might be supposed that I was only too glad to toss off my clothes and climb into the bed I had so unexpectedly acquired a right to. But, as a matter of fact, I did nothing of the kind. Instead, I drew on my boots and sat on the bed's edge, blinking at my candle till it died down in its socket, and afterwards at the purple square of window as it slowly changed to gray with the coming of dawn. I was cold to the heart, and my teeth chattered with an ague. Certainly I never suspected my host's word; but was even occupied in framing good resolutions and shaping out an excellent future, when I heard the front door gently pulled to, and a man's footsteps moving quietly to the gate.

The treachery knocked me in a heap for the moment. Then leaping up and flinging my door wide, I stumbled through the uncertain light of the passage into the front hall.

There was a fan-shaped light over the door, and the place was very still and gray. A quick thought, or rather a sudden prophetic guess at the truth, made me turn to the figure of the mastiff curled under the hall table.

I laid my hand on the scruff of his neck. He was quite limp, and my fingers sank into the flesh on either side of the vertebrae. Digging them deeper, I dragged him out into the middle of the hall, and pulled the front door open to see the better.

His throat was gashed from ear to ear.

How many seconds passed after I dropped the senseless lump on the floor, and before I made another movement, it would puzzle me to say. Twice I stirred a foot as if to run out at the door. Then, changing my mind, I stepped over the mastiff, and ran up the staircase. The light no longer shone out into the left-hand passage; but groping down it, I found the study door open, as before, and passed in. A sick light stole through the blinds--enough for me to distinguish the glasses and decanters on the table, and find my way to the curtain that hung before the room where the light had first attracted me.

I pushed the curtain aside, paused for a moment, and listened to the violent beat of my heart; then felt for the door handle and turned it.

All I could see at first; was that the chamber was small; next, that the light patch in a line with the window was the white coverlet of a bed; and next, that somebody, or something, lay on the bed.

I listened again. There was no sound in the room; no heart beating but my own. I reached out a hand to pull up the blind, and drew it back again. I dared not.

The daylight grew, minute by minute, on the dull parallelogram of the blind, and minute by minute that horrible thing on the bed took something of distinctness. The strain beat me at last. I fetched a veritable yell to give myself courage, and, reaching for the cord, pulled up the blind as fast as it would go.

The face on the pillow was that of an old man--a face waxen and peaceful, with quiet lines about the month and eyes, and long lines of gray hair falling back from the temples. The body was turned a little on one side, and one hand lay outside the bedclothes in a very natural manner. But there were two dark spots on the coverlet.

Then I knew I was face to face with the real householder; and it flashed on me that I had been indiscreet in taking service as his butler, and that I knew the face his ex-butler wore.

And, being by this time awake to the responsibilities of the post, I quitted it three steps at a time, not once looking behind me. Outside the house the storm had died, and white sunlight broke over the sodden moors. But my bones were cold, and I ran faster and faster.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

BY IDA M. TARBELL.

LINCOLN'S PROMINENCE AS A WHIG POLITICIAN AT THIRTY-TWO.--STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS'S REMOVAL TO SPRINGFIELD.--BEGINNING OF THE RIVALRY BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS.--LINCOLN'S PART IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1840.--MARY TODD AND HER ENGAGEMENT TO LINCOLN.--FALSE STORIES REGARDING LINCOLN'S COURTSHIP.--THE LINCOLN AND SHIELDS DUEL.--LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE.

By the time Abraham Lincoln was thirty-two years old--that is, in 1841--he was one of the leading Whig politicians of Illinois. Four times in succession he had been elected to the General Assembly of the State--in 1834, 1836, 1838, and 1840. Twice he had been a candidate for Speaker of the House--in 1838 and in 1840--both times against William L.D. Ewing; and though both times defeated, the vote had in each instance been close. In 1841 he had been talked of as a candidate for governor, a suggestion to which he would not listen.

He had not taken this prominent position because the Whig party lacked material. Edward Dickinson Baker, Colonel John J. Hardin, John T. Stuart, Ninian W. Edwards, Jesse K. Dubois, O.H. Browning, were but a few of the brilliant men who were throwing all their ability and ambition into the contest for political honors in the State. Nor were the Whigs a whit superior to the Democrats. William L.D. Ewing, Ebenezer Peck, William Thomas, James Shields, John Calhoun, were in every respect as able as the best men of the Whig party. Indeed, one of the prominent Democrats with whom Lincoln came often in contact, was popularly regarded as the most brilliant and promising politician of the State--Stephen A. Douglas. His record had been phenomenal. He had amazed both parties, in 1834, by securing appointment by the legislature to the office of State Attorney for the first judicial circuit, over John J. Hardin. In 1836 he had been elected to the legislature, and although he was at that time but twenty-three years of age, he had shown himself one of the most vigorous, capable, and intelligent members. Indeed, Douglas's work in the Tenth Assembly gave him about the same position in the Democratic party of the State at large that Lincoln's work in the same body gave him in the Whig party of his own district. In 1837 he had had no difficulty in being appointed register of the land office, a position which compelled him to make his home in Springfield. It was only a few months after Lincoln rode into town, all his earthly possessions in a pair of saddle-bags, that Douglas appeared. Handsome, polished, and always with an air of prosperity, the advent of the young Democratic official was in striking contrast to that of the sad-eyed, ill-clad, poverty-stricken young lawyer from New Salem.

From the first, Lincoln and Douglas were thrown constantly together in the social life of the town, and often pitted against each other in what were the real forums of the State at that day--the space around the huge "Franklin" stove of some obliging store-keeper, the steps of somebody's law office, a pile of lumber, or a long timber, lying in the public square, where the new State-house was going up.

In the fall of 1837 Douglas was nominated for Congress on the Democratic ticket. His Whig opponent was Lincoln's law partner, John T. Stuart. The campaign which the two conducted was one of the most remarkable in the history of the State. For five months of the spring and summer of 1838 they rode together from town to town all over the northern part of Illinois (Illinois at that time was divided into but three congressional districts; the third, in which Sangamon County was included, being made up of the twenty-two northernmost counties), speaking six days out of seven. When the election came off in August, 1838, out of thirty-six thousand votes cast, Stuart received a majority of only fourteen; but even that majority the Democrats always contended was won unfairly. The campaign was watched with intense interest by the young politicians of Springfield; no one of them felt a deeper interest in it than Lincoln, who was himself at the same time a candidate for member of the State legislature.

From a recent photograph made for MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE. The corner-stone was laid July 4, 1837, about four months after the passage of the act removing the capital to Springfield. The event was attended with elaborate ceremonies. The orator of the day was Colonel E.D. Baker. It was nearly four years before the building was finally completed, at a cost of two hundred and forty thousand dollars. It was first occupied by the legislature during the regular session of 1840-1841, that body, at two previous special sessions, being obliged to use the Methodist church for the Senate, and the Second Presbyterian church for the House. The Supreme Court found a meeting place in the Episcopal church. The legislative committees met in rooms in private houses about town. This building was the State capitol for more than thirty years, becoming, upon the completion of the present State-house, the court-house of Sangamon County.]

Lincoln must have learned by the end of 1840, if not before, something of the power of the "Little Giant," as Douglas was called. Certainly no man in public life between 1837 and 1860 had a greater hold on his followers. The reasons for this grasp are not hard to find. Douglas was by nature buoyant, enthusiastic, impetuous. He had that sunny boyishness which is so irresistible to young and old. With it he had great natural eloquence. When his deep, rich voice rolled out fervid periods in support of the sub-treasury and the convention system, or in opposition to internal improvements by the federal government, the people applauded out of sheer joy at the pleasure of hearing him. He was one of the few men in Illinois whom the epithet of "Yankee" never hurt. He might be a Yankee, but when he sat down on the knee of some surly lawyer, and confidentially told him his plans; or, at a political meeting, took off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves, and "pitched into" his opponent, the sons of Illinois forgot his origin in love for the man.

Lincoln undoubtedly understood the charm of Douglas, and realized his power. But he already had an insight into one of his political characteristics that few people recognized at that day. In writing to Stuart in 1839, while the latter was attending Congress, Lincoln said: "Douglas has not been here since you left. A report is in circulation here now that he has abandoned the idea of going to Washington, though the report does not come in a very authentic form, so far as I can learn. Though, by the way, speaking of authenticity, you know that if we had heard Douglas say that he had abandoned the contest, it would not be very authentic."

In the campaign of 1840 Lincoln and Douglas came more frequently than ever into conflict. At that time the local issues, which had formerly engaged Illinois candidates almost entirely, were lost sight of in national questions. In Springfield, where the leaders of the parties were living, many hot debates were held in private. Out of these grew, in December, 1839, a series of public discussions, extending over eight evenings, and in which several of the first orators of the State took part. Lincoln was the last man on the list. The people were nearly worn out before his turn came, and his audience was small. He began his speech with some melancholy, self-deprecatory reflections, complaining that the small audience cast a damp upon his spirits which he was sure he would be unable to overcome during the evening. He did better than he expected, overcoming the damp on his spirits so effectually that he made what was regarded as the best speech of the series; and by a general request, it was printed for distribution. The speech is peculiarly interesting from the fact that while there is a little of the perfervid eloquence of 1840 in it, as well as a good deal of the rather boisterous humor of the time, a part of it is devoted to a careful examination of the statements of his opponents, and a refutation of them by means of public documents.

From the collection of Mr. O.H. Oldroyd of Washington, D.C.]

From the collection of Mr. John C. Browne of Philadelphia.]

As a good Democrat was expected to do, Douglas had explained with plausibility why the Van Buren administration had in 1838 spent $40,000,000. Lincoln takes up his statements one by one, and proves, as he says, that "the majority of them are wholly untrue." Douglas had attributed a part of the expenditures to the purchase of public lands from the Indians.

"Now it happens," says Lincoln, "that no such purchase was
made during that year. It is true that some money was paid
that year in pursuance of Indian treaties; but no more, or
rather not as much, as had been paid on the same account in
each of several preceding years.... Again, Mr. Douglas says
that the removal of the Indians to the country west of the
Mississippi created much of the expenditure of 1838. I have
examined the public documents in relation to this matter, and
find that less was paid for the removal of the Indians in
that than in some former years. The whole sum expended on that
account in that year did not exceed one quarter of a
million. For this small sum, although we do not think the
administration entitled to credit, because large sums have
been expended in the same way in former years, we consent it
may take one and make the most of it.

"Next, Mr. Douglas says that five millions of the expenditures
of 1838 consisted of the payment of the French indemnity money
to its individual claimants. I have carefully examined the
public documents, and thereby find this statement to be wholly
untrue. Of the forty millions of dollars expended in 1838, I
am enabled to say positively that not one dollar consisted of
payments on the French indemnities. So much for that excuse.

"Next comes the post-office. He says that five millions were
expended during that year to sustain that department. By a
like examination of public documents, I find this also wholly
untrue. Of the so often mentioned forty millions, not one
dollar went to the post-office....

"I return to another of Mr. Douglas's excuses for the
expenditures of 1838, at the same time announcing the pleasing
intelligence that this is the last one. He says that
ten millions of that year's expenditure was a contingent
appropriation, to prosecute an anticipated war with Great
Britain on the Maine boundary question. Few words will settle
this. First, that the ten millions appropriated was not made
till 1839, and consequently could not have been expended in
1838; second, although it was appropriated, it has never been
expended at all. Those who heard Mr. Douglas, recollect that
he indulged himself in a contemptuous expression of pity for
me. 'Now he's got me,' thought I. But when he went on to say
that five millions of the expenditure of 1838 were payments of
the French indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five
millions had been for the post-office, which I knew to be
untrue; that ten millions had been for the Maine boundary war,
which I not only knew to be untrue, but supremely ridiculous
also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough to hope that
I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to
go unexposed,--I readily consented that, on the score both of
veracity and sagacity, the audience should judge whether he or
I were the more deserving of the world's contempt."

From a first-state proof of an engraving of the Cooper Institute picture of Lincoln (see McCLURE'S MAGAZINE for February, 1896, first frontispiece). Made by John C. Buttre, and now in the collection of W.C. Crane of New York City, through whose courtesy it is here reproduced.]

These citations show that Lincoln had already learned to handle public documents, and to depend for at least a part of his success with an audience upon a careful statement of facts. The methods used in at least a portion of this speech are exactly those which made the irresistible strength of his speeches in 1858 and 1859.

LINCOLN IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1840.

But there was little of as good work done in the campaign of 1840, by Lincoln or anybody else, as is found in this speech. It was a campaign of noise and fun, and nowhere more so than in Illinois. Lincoln was one of the five Whig Presidential electors, and he flung himself into the campaign with confidence. "The nomination of Harrison takes first rate," he wrote to his partner Stuart, then in Washington. "You know I am never sanguine, but I believe we will carry the State. The chance of doing so appears to me twenty-five per cent, better than it did for you to beat Douglas." The Whigs, in spite of their dislike of the convention system, organized as they never had before, and even sent out a "confidential" circular of which Lincoln was the author.

Every weapon he thought of possible use in the contest he secured. "Be sure to send me as many copies of the 'Life of Harrison' as you can spare from other uses," he wrote Stuart. "Be very sure to procure and send me the 'Senate Journal' of New York, of September, 1814. I have a newspaper article which says that that document proves that Van Buren voted against raising troops in the last war. And, in general, send me everything you think will be a good 'war-club.'"

Every sign of success he quoted to Stuart; the number of subscribers to the "Old Soldier," a campaign newspaper which the Whig committee had informed the Whigs of the State that they "_must take_;" the names of Van Buren men who were weakening, and to whom he wanted Stuart to send documents; the name of every theretofore doubtful person who had declared himself for Harrison. "Japh Bell has come out for Harrison," he put in a postscript to one letter; "ain't that a caution?"

The monster political meetings held throughout the State did much to widen Lincoln's reputation, particularly one held in June in Springfield. Twenty thousand people attended this meeting, delegations coming from every direction. It took fourteen teams to haul the delegation from Chicago, and they were three weeks on their journey. Each party carried some huge symbolic piece--the log cabin being the favorite. One of the cabins taken to Springfield was drawn by thirty yokes of oxen. In a hickory tree which was planted beside this cabin, coons were seen playing, and a barrel of hard cider stood by the door, continually on tap. Instead of a log cabin, the Chicago delegation dragged across country a government yawl rigged up as a two-masted ship, with a band of music and a six-pounder cannon on board.

There are many reminiscences of this great celebration, and Lincoln's part in it, still afloat in Illinois. General T.J. Henderson writes, in the entertaining reminiscences of Lincoln prepared for this biography:

"The first time I remember to have seen Abraham Lincoln was during the memorable campaign of 1840, when I was a boy fifteen years of age. It was at an immense Whig mass-meeting held at Springfield, Illinois, in the month of June of that year. The Whigs attended this meeting from all parts of the State in large numbers, and it was estimated that from forty to fifty thousand people were present. They came in carriages and wagons, on horseback and on foot. They came with log cabins drawn on wheels by oxen, and with coons, coon-skins, and hard cider. They came with music and banners; and thousands of them came from long distances. It was the first political meeting I had ever attended, and it made a very strong impression upon my youthful mind.

"My father, William H. Henderson, then a resident of Stark County, Illinois, was an ardent Whig; and having served under General William Henry Harrison, the then Whig candidate for President, in the war of 1812-1815, he felt a deep interest in his election. And although he lived about a hundred miles from Springfield, he went with a delegation from Stark County to this political meeting, and took me along with him. I remember that at this great meeting of the supporters of Harrison and Tyler there were a number of able and distinguished speakers of the Whig party of the State of Illinois present. Among them were Colonel E.D. Baker, who was killed at Ball's Bluff, on the Potomac, in the late war, and who was one of the most eloquent speakers in the State; Colonel John J. Hardin, who was killed at the battle of Buena Vista, in the Mexican War; Fletcher Webster, a son of Daniel Webster, who was killed in the late war; S. Leslie Smith, a brilliant orator of Chicago; Rev. John Hogan, Ben Bond, and Abraham Lincoln. I heard all of these men speak on that occasion. And while I was too young to be a judge of their speeches, yet I thought them all to be great men, and none of them greater than Abraham Lincoln."

One of the most prominent members of the Illinois bar has written out especially for this work his impressions of Lincoln's speech at that gathering.

From a photograph by Klauber of Louisville, Kentucky. From a photograph owned by Mr. James B. Speed of Louisville, Kentucky, to whose courtesy we owe the right to reproduce it here. When Lincoln was visiting Joshua F. Speed in 1841, Mrs. Speed, the mother of his friend, became much interested in him. His melancholy was profound, and she tried by kindness and gentleness to arouse him to new interest in life. One day before his departure she asked one of her daughters for the latter's Oxford Bible, telling her she wanted it for Mr. Lincoln, and promising to get another in its place. The gift touched Lincoln deeply, and after he became President he remembered the giver with the above portrait--one he had had taken especially for her, he wrote.]

[Transcriber's Note: The following is handwritten beneath the photograph: "For Mrs. Lucy G. Speed, from whose pious hands I accepted the present of an Oxford Bible twenty years ago. Washington, D.C. October 5, 1861 A. Lincoln"]

From a painting. William Henry Harrison was born at Berkeley, Virginia, February 9, 1773. He was educated at Hampden Sidney College, and began to study medicine, but, excited by Indian outrages, gave it up to enter the army. He was sent against the Indians of the West, and at once distinguished himself. After peace was made in 1798, he was appointed secretary of the Northwest Territory. In 1799 he was a territorial delegate to Congress, and from 1801 to 1813, territorial governor of Indiana. In the war of 1812 he gained the battles of Tippecanoe and the Thames. From 1816 to 1819 he was a delegate to Congress from Ohio; from 1825 to 1828, a United State Senator; and in 1828 and 1829, United States Minister to Colombia. In 1836 he was the Whig candidate for the Presidency, but was defeated. Four years later (1840) he was elected, but lived for only one month after his inauguration.]

"Mr. Lincoln stood in a wagon, from which he addressed the mass of people that surrounded it. The meeting was one of unusual interest because of him who was to make the principal address. It was at the time of his greatest physical strength. He was tall, and perhaps a little more slender than in later life, and more homely than after he became stouter in person. He was then only thirty-one years of age, and yet he was regarded as one of the ablest of the Whig speakers in that campaign. There was that in him that attracted and held public attention. Even then he was the subject of popular regard because of his candid and simple mode of discussing and illustrating political questions. At times he was intensely logical, and was always most convincing in his arguments. The questions involved in that canvass had relation to the tariff, internal public improvements by the federal government, the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of public lands among the several States, and other questions that divided the political parties of that day. They were not such questions as enlisted and engaged his best thoughts; they did not take hold of his great nature, and had no tendency to develop it. At times he discussed the questions of the time in a logical way, but much time was devoted to telling stories to illustrate some phase of his argument, though more often the telling of these stories was resorted to for the purpose of rendering his opponents ridiculous. That was a style of speaking much appreciated at that early day. In that kind of oratory he excelled most of his contemporaries--indeed, he had no equals in the State. One story he told on that occasion was full of salient points, and well illustrated the argument he was making. It was not an impure story, yet it was not one it would be seemly to publish; but rendered, as it was, in his inimitable way, it contained nothing that was offensive to a refined taste. The same story might have been told by another in such a way that it would probably have been regarded as transcending the proprieties of popular address. One characterizing feature of all the stories told by Mr. Lincoln, on the stump and elsewhere, was that although the subject matter of some of them might not have been entirely unobjectionable, yet the manner of telling them was so peculiarly his own that they gave no offence even to refined and cultured people. On the contrary, they were much enjoyed. The story he told on this occasion was much liked by the vast assembly that surrounded the temporary platform from which he spoke, and was received with loud bursts of laughter and applause. It served to place the opposing party and its speakers in a most ludicrous position in respect to the question being considered, and gave him a most favorable hearing for the arguments he later made in support of the measures he was sustaining."