to be grouped with them in our remembrance.

"Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all--
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!"


If we could have looked into a rude log-cabin in Hardin county,
Kentucky, on the morning of the 12th of February, 1809, we should have
seen an infant just born,--and with what promise of future greatness?
Looking ahead ten years, we should have discerned this infant, Abraham,
developing into youth, still living in the old log-cabin, with neither
doors nor windows, with wolves and bears for neighbors, with a shiftless
father. But his mother was dead! Still this mother had left her impress,
and she had become in that boy's heart "an angel of a mother." She made
him what he afterwards proved himself to be. Follow Abraham Lincoln
where we will,--from the cradle to the grave,--and we shall find honesty
and kindness ever distinguishing him. In his boyhood, among boys, he was
always fighting the battle of the offended and the weak; in manhood, he
was always protecting the fugitive from an angry mob; as a lawyer,
saving the widow's son from the gallows, and declining the rich fee of
an unrighteous cause; as a public debater, the fairest ever met in the
political arena; and as president of the republic, honest in his
convictions and kind to his bitterest enemies.

Let us not forget the difficulties which it was his lot and his good
fortune to surmount. He never was six months at school in his life; and
yet, by the use of a single book and the occasional aid of a village
schoolmaster, he became an expert surveyor in six weeks! At the age of