He had now reached the climax of his career and touched the highest point of his greatness. His great task was over, and the heavy burden that had so long worn upon his heart was lifted.

While the whole nation was rejoicing over the return of peace, the Saviour of the Union was stricken down by the hand of an assassin.



WARNINGS OF HIS TRAGIC DEATH.

From early youth, Mr. Lincoln had presentiments that he would die a violent death, or, rather, that his final days would be marked by some great tragic event. From the time of his first election to the Presidency, his closest friends had tried to make him understand that he was in constant danger of assassination, but, notwithstanding his presentiments, he had such splendid courage that he only laughed at their fears.

During the summer months he lived at the Soldiers' Home, some miles from Washington, and frequently made the trip between the White House and the Home without a guard or escort. Secretary of War Stanton and Ward Lamon, Marshal of the District, were almost constantly alarmed over Mr. Lincoln's carelessness in exposing himself to the danger of assassination.

They warned him time and again, and provided suitable body-guards to attend him. But Mr. Lincoln would often give the guards the slip, and, mounting his favorite riding horse, "Old Abe," would set out alone after dark from the White House for the Soldiers' Home.

While riding to the Home one night, he was fired upon by some one in ambush, the bullet passing through his high hat. Mr. Lincoln would not admit that the man who fired the shot had tried to kill him. He always attributed it to an accident, and begged his friends to say nothing about it.

Now that all the circumstances of the assassination are known, it is plain that there was a deep-laid and well-conceived plot to kill Mr. Lincoln long before the crime was actually committed. When Mr. Lincoln was delivering his second inaugural address on the steps of the Capitol, an excited individual tried to force his way through the guards in the building to get on the platform with Mr. Lincoln.

It was afterward learned that this man was John Wilkes Booth, who afterwards assassinated Mr. Lincoln in Ford's Theatre, on the night of the 14th of April.



LINCOLN AT THE THEATRE.

The manager of the theatre had invited the President to witness a performance of a new play known as "Our American Cousin," in which the famous actress, Laura Keane, was playing. Mr. Lincoln was particularly fond of the theatre. He loved Shakespeare's plays above all others and never missed a chance to see the leading Shakespearean actors.

As "Our American Cousin" was a new play, the President did not care particularly to see it, but as Mrs. Lincoln was anxious to go, he consented and accepted the invitation.

General Grant was in Washington at the time, and as he was extremely anxious about the personal safety of the President, he reported every day regularly at the White House. Mr. Lincoln invited General Grant and his wife to accompany him and Mrs. Lincoln to the theatre on the night of the assassination, and the general accepted, but while they were talking he received a note from Mrs. Grant saying that she wished to leave Washington that evening to visit her daughter in Burlington. General Grant made his excuses to the President and left to accompany Mrs. Grant to the railway station. It afterwards became known that it was also a part of the plot to assassinate General Grant, and only Mrs. Grant's departure from Washington that evening prevented the attempt from being made.

General Grant afterwards said that as he and Mrs. Grant were riding along Pennsylvania avenue to the railway station a horseman rode rapidly by at a gallop, and, wheeling his horse, rode back, peering into their carriage as he passed.

Mrs. Grant remarked to the general: "That is the very man who sat near us at luncheon to-day and tried to overhear our conversation. He was so rude, you remember, as to cause us to leave the dining-room. Here he is again, riding after us."

General Grant attributed the action of the man to idle curiosity, but learned afterward that the horseman was John Wilkes Booth.



LAMON'S REMARKABLE REQUEST.

Probably one reason why Mr. Lincoln did not particularly care to go to the theatre that night was a sort of half promise he had made to his friend and bodyguard, Marshal Lamon. Two days previous he had sent Lamon to Richmond on business connected with a call of a convention for reconstruction. Before leaving, Mr. Lamon saw Mr. Usher, the Secretary of the Interior, and asked him to persuade Mr. Lincoln to use more caution about his personal safety, and to go out as little as possible while Lamon was absent. Together they went to see Mr. Lincoln, and Lamon asked the President if he would make him a promise.

"I think I can venture to say I will," said Mr. Lincoln. "What is it?"

"Promise me that you will not go out after night while I am gone," said Mr. Lamon, "particularly to the theatre."

Mr. Lincoln turned to Mr. Usher and said: "Usher, this boy is a monomaniac on the subject of my safety. I can hear him or hear of his being around at all times in the night, to prevent somebody from murdering me. He thinks I shall be killed, and we think he is going crazy. What does any one want to assassinate me for? If any one wants to do so, he can do it any day or night if he is ready to give his life for mine. It is nonsense."

Mr. Usher said to Mr. Lincoln that it was well to heed Lamon's warning, as he was thrown among people from whom he had better opportunities to know about such matters than almost any one.

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln to Lamon, "I promise to do the best I can toward it."



HOW LINCOLN WAS MURDERED.

The assassination of President Lincoln was most carefully planned, even to the smallest detail. The box set apart for the President's party was a double one in the second tier at the left of the stage. The box had two doors with spring locks, but Booth had loosened the screws with which they were fastened so that it was impossible to secure them from the inside. In one door he had bored a hole with a gimlet, so that he could see what was going on inside the box.

An employee of the theatre by the name of Spangler, who was an accomplice of the assassin, had even arranged the seats in the box to suit the purposes of Booth.

On the fateful night the theatre was packed. The Presidential party arrived a few minutes after nine o'clock, and consisted of the President and Mrs. Lincoln, Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, daughter and stepson of Senator Harris of New York. The immense audience rose to its feet and cheered the President as he passed to his box.

Booth came into the theatre about ten o'clock. He had not only, planned to kill the President, but he had also planned to escape into Maryland, and a swift horse, saddled and ready for the journey, was tied in the rear of the theatre. For a few minutes he pretended to be interested in the performance, and then gradually made his way back to the door of the President's box.

Before reaching there, however, he was confronted by one of the President's messengers, who had been stationed at the end of the passage leading to the boxes to prevent any one from intruding. To this man Booth handed a card saying that the President had sent for him, and was permitted to enter.

Once inside the hallway leading to the boxes, he closed the hall door and fastened it by a bar prepared for the occasion, so that it was impossible to open it from without. Then he quickly entered the box through the right-hand door. The President was sitting in an easy armchair in the left-hand corner of the box nearest the audience. He was leaning on one hand and with the other had hold of a portion of the drapery. There was a smile on his face. The other members of the party were intently watching the performance on the stage.

The assassin carried in his right hand a small silver-mounted derringer pistol and in his left a long double-edged dagger. He placed the pistol just behind the President's left ear and fired.

Mr. Lincoln bent slightly forward and his eyes closed, but in every other respect his attitude remained unchanged.

The report of the pistol startled Major Rathbone, who sprang to his feet. The murderer was then about six feet from the President, and Rathbone grappled with him, but was shaken off. Dropping his pistol, Booth struck at Rathbone with the dagger and inflicted a severe wound. The assassin then placed his left hand lightly on the railing of the box and jumped to the stage, eight or nine feet below.



BOOTH BRANDISHES HIS DAGGER AND ESCAPES.

The box was draped with the American flag, and, in jumping, Booth's spurs caught in the folds, tearing down the flag, the assassin falling heavily to the stage and spraining his ankle. He arose, however, and walked theatrically across the stage, brandished his knife and shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" and then added, "The South is avenged."

For the moment the audience was horrified and incapable of action. One man only, a lawyer named Stuart, had sufficient presence of mind to leap upon the stage and attempt to capture the assassin. Booth went to the rear door of the stage, where his horse was held in readiness for him, and, leaping into the saddle, dashed through the streets toward Virginia. Miss Keane rushed to the President's box with water and stimulants, and medical aid was summoned.

By this time the audience realized the tragedy that had been enacted, and then followed a scene such as has never been witnessed in any public gathering in this country. Women wept, shrieked and fainted; men raved and swore, and horror was depicted on every face. Before the audience could be gotten out of the theatre, horsemen were dashing through the streets and the telegraph was carrying the terrible details of the tragedy throughout the nation.



WALT WHITMAN'S DESCRIPTION.

Walt Whitman, the poet, has sketched in graphic language the scenes of that most eventful fourteenth of April. His account of the assassination has become historic, and is herewith given:

"The day (April 14, 1865) seems to have been a pleasant one throughout the whole land—the moral atmosphere pleasant, too—the long storm, so dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over and ended at last by the sunrise of such an absolute national victory, and utter breaking down of secessionism—we almost doubted our senses! Lee had capitulated, beneath the apple tree at Appomattox. The other armies, the flanges of the revolt, swiftly followed.

"And could it really be, then? Out of all the affairs of this world of woe and passion, of failure and disorder and dismay, was there really come the confirmed, unerring sign of peace, like a shaft of pure light—of rightful rule—of God?

"But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popular afternoon paper, the little Evening Star, had scattered all over its third page, divided among the advertisements in a sensational manner in a hundred different places:

"'The President and his lady will be at the theatre this evening.'

"Lincoln was fond of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember thinking how funny it was that he, the leading actor in the greatest and stormiest drama known to real history's stage, through centuries, should sit there and be so completely interested in those human jackstraws, moving about with their silly little gestures, foreign spirit, and flatulent text.

"So the day, as I say, was propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, were out. I remember where I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many lilacs in full bloom.

"By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge to events without being a part of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy of this day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails.

"On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual cluster of gas lights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful with perfumes, music of violins and flutes—and over all, that saturating, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all the perfumes.

"The President came betimes, and, with his wife, witnessed the play from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely draped with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the piece—one of those singularly witless compositions which have at the least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic or spiritual nature—a piece in which among other characters, so called, a Yankee—certainly such a one as was never seen, or at least like it ever seen in North America, is introduced in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama—had progressed perhaps through a couple of its acts, when, in the midst of this comedy, or tragedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be called, and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the Great Muse's mockery of these poor mimics, comes interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have left little but a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)—and yet partially described as I now proceed to give it:

"There is a scene in the play, representing the modern parlor, in which two unprecedented ladies are informed by the unprecedented and impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the comments being finished, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment.

"There was a pause, a hush, as it were. At this period came the death of Abraham Lincoln.

"Great as that was, with all its manifold train circling around it, and stretching into the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, etc., of the New World, in point of fact, the main thing, the actual murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest occurrence—the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance.

"Through the general hum following the stage pause, with the change of positions, etc., came the muffled sound of a pistol shot, which not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time—and yet a moment's hush—somehow, surely a vague, startled thrill—and then, through the ornamented, draperied, starred and striped space-way of the President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage, falls out of position, catching his boot heel in the copious drapery (the American flag), falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happened (he really sprains his ankle, unfelt then)—and the figure, Booth, the murderer, dressed in plain black broadcloth, bareheaded, with a full head of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes, like some mad animal's, flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness holds aloft in one hand a large knife—walks along not much back of the footlights—turns fully towards the audience, his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity—launches out in a firm and steady voice the words, 'Sic semper tyrannis'—and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears.

"(Had not all this terrible scene—making the mimic ones preposterous—had it not all been rehearsed, in blank, by Booth, beforehand?)

"A moment's hush, incredulous—a scream—a cry of murder—Mrs. Lincoln leaning out of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing to the retreating figure, 'He has killed the President!'

"And still a moment's strange, incredulous suspense—and then the deluge!—then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty—the sound, somewhere back, of a horse's hoofs clattering with speed—the people burst through chairs and railings, and break them up—that noise adds to the queerness of the scene—there is inextricable confusion and terror—women faint—quite feeble persons fall, and are trampled on—many cries of agony are heard—the broad stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival—the audience rush generally upon it—at least the strong men do—the actors and actresses are there in their play costumes and painted faces, with mortal fright showing through the rouge—some trembling, some in tears—the screams and calls, confused talk—redoubled, trebled—two or three manage to pass up water from the stage to the President's box, others try to clamber up, etc., etc.

"In the midst of all this the soldiers of the President's Guard, with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in—some two hundred altogether—they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially the upper ones—inflamed with fury, literally charging the audience with fixed bayonets, muskets and pistols, shouting, 'Clear out! clear out!'

"Such a wild scene, or a suggestion of it, rather, inside the playhouse that night!

"Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people filled with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, came near committing murder several times on innocent individuals.

"One such case was particularly exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he uttered, or perhaps without any cause at all, and were proceeding to hang him at once to a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen, who placed him in their midst and fought their way slowly and amid great peril toward the station-house.

"It was a fitting episode of the whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro, the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frightened people trying in vain to extricate themselves, the attacked man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse; the silent, resolute half-dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms, made, indeed, a fitting side scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gained the station-house with the protected man, whom they placed in security for the night, and discharged in the morning.

"And in the midst of that night pandemonium of senseless hate, infuriated soldiers, the audience and the crowd—the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its paint pots, spangles, gas-light—the life-blood from those veins, the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down, and death's ooze already begins its little bubbles on the lips.

"Such, hurriedly sketched, were the accompaniments of the death of President Lincoln. So suddenly, and in murder and horror unsurpassed, he was taken from us. But his death was painless."

The assassin's bullet did not produce instant death, but the President never again became conscious. He was carried to a house opposite the theatre, where he died the next morning. In the meantime the authorities had become aware of the wide-reaching conspiracy, and the capital was in a state of terror.

On the night of the President's assassination, Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, was attacked while in bed with a broken arm, by Booth's fellow-conspirators, and badly wounded.

The conspirators had also planned to take the lives of Vice-President Johnson and Secretary Stanton. Booth had called on Vice-President Johnson the day before, and, not finding him in, left a card.

Secretary Stanton acted with his usual promptness and courage. During the period of excitement he acted as President, and directed the plans for the capture of Booth.

Among other things, he issued the following reward:

REWARD OFFERED BY SECRETARY STANTON. War Department, Washington, April 20, 1865. Major-General John A. Dix, New York:

The murderer of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln, is still at large. Fifty thousand dollars reward will be paid by this Department for his apprehension, in addition to any reward offered by municipal authorities or State Executives.

Twenty-five thousand dollars reward will be paid for the apprehension of G. W. Atzerodt, sometimes called "Port Tobacco," one of Booth's accomplices. Twenty-five thousand dollars reward will be paid for the apprehension of David C. Herold, another of Booth's accomplices.

A liberal reward will be paid for any information that shall conduce to the arrest of either the above-named criminals or their accomplices.

All persons harboring or secreting the said persons, or either of them, or aiding or assisting their concealment or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of the President and the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State, and shall be subject to trial before a military commission, and the punishment of death.

Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land by the arrest and punishment of the murderers.

All good citizens are exhorted to aid public justice on this occasion. Every man should consider his own conscience charged with this solemn duty, and rest neither night nor day until it be accomplished.

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.



BOOTH FOUND IN A BARN.

Booth, accompanied by David C. Herold, a fellow-conspirator, finally made his way into Maryland, where eleven days after the assassination the two were discovered in a barn on Garrett's farm near Port Royal on the Rappahannock. The barn was surrounded by a squad of cavalrymen, who called upon the assassins to surrender. Herold gave himself up and was roundly cursed and abused by Booth, who declared that he would never be taken alive.

The cavalrymen then set fire to the barn and as the flames leaped up the figure of the assassin could be plainly seen, although the wall of fire prevented him from seeing the soldiers. Colonel Conger saw him standing upright upon a crutch with a carbine in his hands.

When the fire first blazed up Booth crept on his hands and knees to the spot, evidently for the purpose of shooting the man who had applied the torch, but the blaze prevented him from seeing anyone. Then it seemed as if he were preparing to extinguish the flames, but seeing the impossibility of this he started toward the door with his carbine held ready for action.

His eyes shone with the light of fever, but he was pale as death and his general appearance was haggard and unkempt. He had shaved off his mustache and his hair was closely cropped. Both he and Herold wore the uniforms of Confederate soldiers.



BOOTH SHOT BY "BOSTON" CORBETT.

The last orders given to the squad pursuing Booth were: "Don't shoot Booth, but take him alive." Just as Booth started to the door of the barn this order was disobeyed by a sergeant named Boston Corbett, who fired through a crevice and shot Booth in the neck. The wounded man was carried out of the barn and died four hours afterward on the grass where they had laid him. Before he died he whispered to Lieutenant Baker, "Tell mother I died for my country; I thought I did for the best." What became of Booth's body has always been and probably always will be a mystery. Many different stories have been told concerning his final resting place, but all that is known positively is that the body was first taken to Washington and a post-mortem examination of it held on the Monitor Montauk. On the night of April 27th it was turned over to two men who took it in a rowboat and disposed of it secretly. How they disposed of it none but themselves know and they have never told.



FATE OF THE CONSPIRATORS.

The conspiracy to assassinate the President involved altogether twenty-five people. Among the number captured and tried were David C. Herold, G. W. Atzerodt, Louis Payne, Edward Spangler, Michael O'Loughlin, Samuel Arnold, Mrs. Surratt and Dr. Samuel Mudd, a physician, who set Booth's leg, which was sprained by his fall from the stage box. Of these Herold, Atzerodt, Payne and Mrs. Surratt were hanged. Dr. Mudd was deported to the Dry Tortugas. While there an epidemic of yellow fever broke out and he rendered such good service that he was granted a pardon and died a number of years ago in Maryland.

John Surratt, the son of the woman who was hanged, made his escape to Italy, where he became one of the Papal guards in the Vatican at Rome. His presence there was discovered by Archbishop Hughes, and, although there were no extradition laws to cover his case, the Italian Government gave him up to the United States authorities.

He had two trials. At the first the jury disagreed; the long delay before his second trial allowed him to escape by pleading the statute of limitation. Spangler and O'Loughlin were sent to the Dry Tortugas and served their time.

Ford, the owner of the theatre in which the President was assassinated, was a Southern sympathizer, and when he attempted to re-open his theatre after the great national tragedy, Secretary Stanton refused to allow it. The Government afterward bought the theatre and turned it into a National museum.

President Lincoln was buried at Springfield, and on the day of his funeral there was universal grief.



HENRY WARD BEECHER'S EULOGY.

No final words of that great life can be more fitly spoken than the eulogy pronounced by Henry Ward Beecher:

"And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and States are his pall-bearers, and the cannon speaks the hours with solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh.

"Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is any man that was ever fit to live dead? Disenthralled of flesh, risen to the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life is now grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be.

"Pass on, thou that hast overcome. Ye people, behold the martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty."



ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S FAMILY.

Abraham Lincoln was married on November 4, 1842, to Miss Mary Todd, four sons being the issue of the union.

Robert Todd, born August 1, 1843, removed to Chicago after his father's death, practiced law, and became wealthy; in 1881 he was appointed Secretary of War by President Garfield, and served through President Arthur's term; was made Minister to England in 1889, and served four years; became counsel for the Pullman Palace Car Company, and succeeded to the presidency of that corporation upon the death of George M. Pullman.

Edward Baker, born March 10, 1846, died in infancy.

William Wallace, born December 21, 1850, died in the White House in February, 1862.

Thomas (known as "Tad"), born April 4, 1853, died in 1871.

Mrs. Lincoln died in her sixty-fourth year at the home of her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, at Springfield, Illinois, in 1882. She was the daughter of Robert S. Todd, of Kentucky. Her great-uncle, John Todd, and her grandfather, Levi Todd, accompanied General George Rogers Clark to Illinois, and were present at the capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes. In December, 1778, John Todd was appointed by Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, to be lieutenant of the County of Illinois, then a part of Virginia. Colonel John Todd was one of the original proprietors of the town of Lexington, Kentucky. While encamped on the site of the present city, he heard of the opening battle of the Revolution, and named his infant settlement in its honor.

Mrs. Lincoln was a proud, ambitious woman, well-educated, speaking French fluently, and familiar with the ways of the best society in Lexington, Kentucky, where she was born December 13, 1818. She was a pupil of Madame Mantelli, whose celebrated seminary in Lexington was directly opposite the residence of Henry Clay. The conversation at the seminary was carried on entirely in French.

She visited Springfield, Illinois, in 1837, remained three months and then returned to her native State. In 1839 she made Springfield her permanent home. She lived with her eldest sister, Elizabeth, wife of Ninian W. Edwards, Lincoln's colleague in the Legislature, and it was not strange she and Lincoln should meet. Stephen A. Douglas was also a friend of the Edwards family, and a suitor for her hand, but she rejected him to accept the future President. She was one of the belles of the town.

She is thus described at the time she made her home in Springfield—1839:

"She was of the average height, weighing about a hundred and thirty pounds. She was rather compactly built, had a well rounded face, rich dark-brown hair, and bluish-gray eyes. In her bearing she was proud, but handsome and vivacious; she was a good conversationalist, using with equal fluency the French and English languages.

"When she used a pen, its point was sure to be sharp, and she wrote with wit and ability. She not only had a quick intellect but an intuitive judgment of men and their motives. Ordinarily she was affable and even charming in her manners; but when offended or antagonized she could be very bitter and sarcastic.

"In her figure and physical proportions, in education, bearing, temperament, history—in everything she was the exact reverse of Lincoln."

That Mrs. Lincoln was very proud of her husband there is no doubt; and it is probable that she married him largely from motives of ambition. She knew Lincoln better than he knew himself; she instinctively felt that he would occupy a proud position some day, and it is a matter of record that she told Ward Lamon, her husband's law partner, that "Mr. Lincoln will yet be President of the United States."

Mrs. Lincoln was decidedly pro-slavery in her views, but this never disturbed Lincoln. In various ways they were unlike. Her fearless, witty, and austere nature had nothing in common with the calm, imperturbable, and simple ways of her thoughtful and absent-minded husband. She was bright and sparkling in conversation, and fit to grace any drawing-room. She well knew that to marry Lincoln meant not a life of luxury and ease, for Lincoln was not a man to accumulate wealth; but in him she saw position in society, prominence in the world, and the grandest social distinction. By that means her ambition was certainly satisfied, for nineteen years after her marriage she was "the first lady of the land," and the mistress of the White House.

After his marriage, by dint of untiring efforts and the recognition of influential friends, the couple managed through rare frugality to move along.

In Lincoln's struggles, both in the law and for political advancement, his wife shared his sacrifices. She was a plucky little woman, and in fact endowed with a more restless ambition than he. She was gifted with a rare insight into the motives that actuate mankind, and there is no doubt that much of Lincoln's success was in a measure attributable to her acuteness and the stimulus of her influence.

His election to Congress within four years after their marriage afforded her extreme gratification. She loved power and prominence, and was inordinately proud of her tall and ungainly husband. She saw in him bright prospects ahead, and his every move was watched by her with the closest interest. If to other persons he seemed homely, to her he was the embodiment of noble manhood, and each succeeding day impressed upon her the wisdom of her choice of Lincoln over Douglas—if in reality she ever seriously accepted the latter's attentions.

"Mr. Lincoln may not be as handsome a figure," she said one day in Lincoln's law office during her husband's absence, when the conversation turned on Douglas, "but the people are perhaps not aware that his heart is as large as his arms are long."



LINCOLN MONUMENT AT SPRINGFIELD.

The remains of Abraham Lincoln rest beneath a magnificent monument in Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Ill. Before they were deposited in their final resting place they were moved many times.

On May 4, 1865, all that was mortal of Abraham Lincoln was deposited in the receiving vault at the cemetery, until a tomb could be built. In 1876 thieves made an unsuccessful attempt to steal the remains. From the tomb the body of the martyred President was removed later to the monument.

A flight of iron steps, commencing about fifty yards east of the vault, ascends in a curved line to the monument, an elevation of more than fifty feet.

Excavation for this monument commenced September 9, 1869. It is built of granite, from quarries at Biddeford, Maine. The rough ashlers were shipped to Quincy, Massachusetts, where they were dressed and numbered, thence shipped to Springfield. It is 721 feet from east to west, 119 1/2 feet from north to south, and l00 feet high. The total cost is about $230,000 to May 1, 1885. All the statuary is orange-colored bronze. The whole monument was designed by Larkin G. Mead; the statuary was modeled in plaster by him in Florence, Italy, and cast by the Ames Manufacturing Company, of Chicopee, Massachusetts. A statue of Lincoln and Coat of Arms were first placed on the monument; the statue was unveiled and the monument dedicated October 15, 1874. Infantry and Naval Groups were put on in September, 1877, an Artillery Group, April 13, 1882, and a Cavalry Group, March 13, 1883.

The principal front of the monument is on the south side, the statue of Lincoln being on that side of the obelisk, over Memorial Hall. On the east side are three tablets, upon which are the letters U. S. A. To the right of that, and beginning with Virginia, we find the the abbreviations of the original thirteen States. Next comes Vermont, the first state admitted after the Union was perfected, the States following in the order they were admitted, ending with Nebraska on the east, thus forming the cordon of thirty-seven States composing the United States of America when the monument was erected. The new States admitted since the monument was built have been added.

The statue of Lincoln is just above the Coat of Arms of the United States. The grand climax is indicated by President Lincoln, with his left hand holding out as a golden scepter the emancipation Proclamation, while in his right he holds the pen with which he has just written it. The right hand is resting on another badge of authority, the American flag, thrown over the fasces. At the foot of the fasces lies a wreath of laurel, with which to crown the President as the victor over slavery and rebellion.

On March 10, 1900, President Lincoln's body was removed to a temporary vault to permit of alterations to the monument. The shaft was made twenty feet higher, and other changes were made costing $100,000.

April 24, 1901. the body was again transferred to the monument without public ceremony.

THE END