ehend, if a man only tries hard enough. When I was a boy I used to
hear the neighbors talking, and it bothered me so because I could not
understand them that I used to sit up half the night thinking things out
for myself. I remember that I did not know what the word demonstrate
meant. So I stopped my studies then and there and got a volume of Euclid.
Before I got through I could demonstrate everything in it, and I have
never been bothered with demonstrate since."

I thought of those wonderfully limpid speeches of his: of the Freeport
debates, and of the contrast between his style and Douglas's. And I
understood the reason for it at last. I understood the supreme mind that
had conceived the Freeport Question. And as I stood before him then, at
the close of this fearful war, the words of the Gospel were in my mind.
'So the last shall be first, and the first, last; for many be called, but
few chosen.'

How I wished that all those who have maligned and tortured him could talk
with him as I had talked with him. To know his great heart would disarm
them of all antagonism. They would feel, as I feel, that his life is so
much nobler than theirs, and his burdens so much heavier, that they would
go away ashamed of their criticism.

He said to me once, "Brice, I hope we are in sight of the end, now. I hope
that we may get through without any more fighting. I don't want to see
any more of our countrymen killed. And then," he said, as if talking to
himself, "and then we must show them mercy--mercy."

I thought it a good time to mention Colfax's case. He has been on my mind
ever since. Mr. Lincoln listened attentively. Once he sighed, and he was
winding his long fingers around each other while I talked.

"I saw the man captured, Mr. Lincoln," I concluded, "And if a
technicality will help him out, he was actually within his own skirmish
line at the time. The Rebel skirmishers had not fallen back on each side
of him."

"Brice," he said, with that sorrowful smile, "a technicality might save
Colfax, but it won't save me. Is this man a friend of yours?" he asked.

That was a poser.

"I think he is, Mr. Lincoln. I should like to call him so. I admire him."
And I went on to tell of what he had done at Vicksburg, leaving out,
however, my instrumentality in having him sent north. The President used
almost Sherman's words.

"By Jing!" he exclaimed. (That seems to be a favorite expression of his.)
"Those fellows were born to fight. If