t in
getting Baker the nomination I shall be fixed like a fellow who is made
a groomsman to a fellow that has cut him out, and is marrying his own
dear 'gal.'"

Mr. Lincoln, about this time, was offered the nomination for Governor of
Illinois, and declined the honor. Mrs. Lincoln, who had supreme
confidence in her husband's ability, tried to make him more
self-seeking in his political efforts. He visited his old home in
Indiana, making several speeches in that part of the State. It was
fourteen years after he and all the family had removed to Illinois. One
of his speeches was delivered from the door of a harness shop near
Gentryville, and one he made in the "Old Carter Schoolhouse." After this
address he drove home with Mr. Josiah Crawford--"Old Blue Nose" for whom
he had "pulled fodder" to pay an exorbitant price for Weems's "Life of
Washington," and in whose house his sister and he had lived as hired
girl and hired man. He delighted the old friends by asking about
everybody, and being interested in the "old swimming-hole," Jones's
grocery where he had often argued and "held forth," the saw-pit, the old
mill, the blacksmith shop, whose owner, Mr. Baldwin, had told him some
of his best stories, and where he once started in to learn the
blacksmith's trade. He went around and called on all his former
acquaintances who were still living in the neighborhood. His memories
were so vivid and his emotions so keen that he wrote a long poem about
this, from which the following are three stanzas:

"My childhood's home I see again
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds the brain,
There's pleasure in it, too.

"Ah, Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise.

"And freed from all that's earthy, vile,
Seems hallowed, pure and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle,
All bathed in liquid light."

TRYING TO SAVE BILLY FROM A BAD HABIT

As Mr. Lincoln spent so much of his time away from Springfield he felt
that he needed a younger assistant to "keep office" and look after his
cases in the different courts. He should not have made "Billy" Herndon
an equal partner, but he did so, though the young man had neither the
ability nor experience to earn anything like half the income of the
office. If Herndon had kept sober and d