credulous in such matters, and he gave the man's prophecies a fair trial. Finally, after several disappointments, he wrote to the prophet declining to see him again, because he had predicted it would not rain for a month, and a ten-hour downpour set in within two or three days.

He did not hesitate to protect himself, when it seemed to him patience had ceased to be a virtue. One insulting visitor, an army officer, who had been cashiered and who was blind to gentler reproof, overstepped all bounds. Lincoln seized him by the collar and marched him to the door.

On the whole, he derived much profit from his practice of keeping open house. In the first place, he genuinely enjoyed the occasion. Human nature delighted him. All who came into his presence felt that he was interested in them, and not holding himself above them. The man fairly breathed equality.

His natural, unconscious democracy was reflected in a story he told of a dream he had. He dreamed he was in some great assembly, and the people drew back to let him pass, whereupon he heard some one say, "He is a common-looking fellow." In his dream, Lincoln turned to the man and said, "Friend, the Lord prefers common-looking people; that is why He made so many of them."

Those who approached him in awe of his station were instantly at ease as they came to him and ready to confide in him, as in a friend. No honest man was abashed in his presence or humbled himself as he greeted him. On his part, if he could do a kindness to a simple person, with no powerful influence behind him, he was happy.

He called these receptions his "public opinion baths," because he said he came out of them renovated and invigorated in his sense of responsibility and duty. "No hours of my day," he reasoned, "are better employed than those which bring me again within the direct contact and the atmosphere of the average of our whole people." Officials are in danger of becoming merely official, and of forgetting that they hold power only for others. Meeting the people in the free way that he did, served, he said, "to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprang and to which I must return."

The first principle of Lincoln's wonderful leadership was to keep always in touch with the people. Absorbed in his duties, he lost the habit of newspaper reading, and once when urged to read some editorial comments on a subject, he replied, "I know more about it than any of them." He went neither to editors nor to senators to learn public opinion,

and he repeatedly showed that his judgment of it was more correct than theirs.

"I don't want to know what Washington thinks about it," he said to a man who was telling him of opinion in Congress. He preferred to deal directly with the people. When he had anything to say to them, he knew how to say it in a way they would surely understand. "Billy, don't shoot too high,” he used to caution Herndon, his old law partner. The people knew, too, that when he spoke, it was to some purpose other than to hear himself talk. "I am very little inclined on any occasion," he remarked, "to say anything unless I hope to produce some good by it."

To a regiment which he reviewed he made an appeal for the Union that brought the cause home to every fireside: "I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has. It is in order that each one of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed an open field and a fair chance. . . that the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright.

When some workingmen from New York called, they saw in him a fellow-laborer, who personified the opportunity for which the republic stands.

"The strongest bond of human sympathy," Lincoln told them, "outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations and tongues and kindred," but not to war upon property. "Let not him," he said, "who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

In him the multitude saw themselves in the White House, for his virtues were all simple ones, as likely to be found among common men as in any grade of life, truth, temperance, courage, and wisdom. James Russell Lowell, in the middle of Lincoln's term, drew from his example the lesson that "a profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship."

Lincoln influenced the people far more than they influenced him in whatever intercourse he had with them. He was not in any sense a "President with his ear to the ground." He needed to consult only his own instincts in order to know the people's, for he could feel, as Emerson said, "the pulse of twenty million throbbing in his heart."

LINCOLN AND HIS CHILDREN

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His sympathetic attitude toward youth. — “Tad” and “Willie” with their pets and at play in the White House. Their shouts always welcome in the ears of their care-burdened father, and their intrusions never resented. - Willie's death,, February 20, 1862, and Lincoln's grief. "The hardest trial of life." -Little Tad, the President's only chum in the dark days. of war time. Stanton made him a lieutenant. - Lincoln's modest application to Grant in behalf of his son Robert. -Tad and the office seekers.Falling asleep nightly beside his father at work.

CHILDREN liked Lincoln. Their keen eyes seemed to penetrate his sad and rugged countenance and see the good-natured man behind it. Simple persons, young as well as old, instinctively felt a kinship with him and stood in no awe of him. Babies in their mothers' arms reached out trustingly toward him, and romping youngsters were not stilled in his presence. He delighted in their bold freedom and did not care if they were noisy.

He looked upon the hard privations of his own boyhood as an example to be avoided and not followed. For that reason, he was not given to preaching from the familiar text, "When I was a boy I had to do this and that."