chairman of
the meeting got Lincoln a glass of water, and Conwell thought that it
was from a personal desire to help him and keep him from breaking down.
But he loves to tell how Lincoln became a changed man as he spoke;
how he seemed to feel ashamed of his brief embarrassment and, pulling
himself together and putting aside the written speech which he had
prepared, spoke freely and powerfully, with splendid conviction, as only
a born orator speaks. To Conwell it was a tremendous experience.

The second time he saw Lincoln was when he went to Washington to plead
for the life of one of his men who had been condemned to death for
sleeping on post. He was still but a captain (his promotion to a
colonelcy was still to come), a youth, and was awed by going into the
presence of the man he worshiped. And his voice trembles a little, even
now, as he tells of how pleasantly Lincoln looked up from his desk, and
how cheerfully he asked his business with him, and of how absorbedly
Lincoln then listened to his tale, although, so it appeared, he already
knew of the main outline.

"It will be all right," said Lincoln, when Conwell finished. But Conwell
was still frightened. He feared that in the multiplicity of public
matters this mere matter of the life of a mountain boy, a private
soldier, might be forgotten till too late. "It is almost the time set--"
he faltered. And Conwell's voice almost breaks, man of emotion that
he is, as he tells of how Lincoln said, with stern gravity: "Go and
telegraph that soldier's mother that Abraham Lincoln never signed a
warrant to shoot a boy under twenty, and never will." That was the one
and only time that he spoke with Lincoln, and it remains an indelible
impression.

The third time he saw Lincoln was when, as officer of the day, he stood
for hours beside the dead body of the President as it lay in state
in Washington. In those hours, as he stood rigidly as the throng went
shuffling sorrowfully through, an immense impression came to Colonel
Conwell of the work and worth of the man who there lay dead, and that
impression has never departed.

John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, old Revolutionary Lexington--how Conwell's
life is associated with famous men and places!--and it was actually
at Lexington that he made the crucial decision as to the course of his
life! And it seems to me that it was, although quite unconsciously,
because of the very fact that it was Lexington that Conwell was
influenced to d