thanks.
The lecture system was then just beginning, and its bright stars,
Phillips, Holmes, Whipple, Beecher, Gough, and Curtis were then
mounting the zenith.

Carleton made another trip West in 1857, seeing the Mississippi, when
the railway was completed from Cincinnati to St. Louis. When the crowd
was near degenerating into a drunken mob,--the native wine of Missouri
being served free to everybody,--the committee in charge cut off the
supply of drink, and thus saved a riot. From St. Louis he went to
Liverpool, on the Illinois River, to see about his land affairs. He
enjoyed hugely the strange frontier scenes, meals in log cabins, and
the trial of a case in court, which was in a schoolroom lighted by two
tallow candles.

The Boston _Atlas_, unable to hold up the world, had summoned the
_Bee_ to its aid, yet did not even then stand on a paying basis.
Finally it became absorbed in the Boston _Traveller_. Carleton again
entered the service of the Boston _Journal_ as reporter. Yet life was
a hard struggle. Through the years 1857, 1858, 1859, Carleton was
floating around among the newspapers getting a precarious
living,--hardly a living. He wrote a few stories for _Putnam's
Magazine_, for one of which he was paid ten dollars. One of the bright
spots in this period of uncertainty was his attendance, at Springfield
and Newport, upon the meetings of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. He also became more or less acquainted with
men who were afterwards governors of Massachusetts, or United States
senators, with John Brown and Stephen A. Douglas.

The political campaign which resulted in the election of Abraham
Lincoln to the presidency is described in Mr. Coffin's own words:

"During the winter of 1859, George W. Gage, proprietor of the Tremont
House at Chicago, visited Boston. I had known him many years. Being
from the West, I asked him who he thought would be acceptable to the
Republicans of the West as candidate for the presidency. The names
prominently before the country were those of W. H. Seward, S. P.
Chase, Edward Bates, and J. C. Fremont.

"'We shall elect whomsoever we nominate,' said Mr. Gage. 'The
Democratic party is going to split. The Northern and Western Democrats
will go for Douglas. The slaveholders never will accept him. The Whig
party is but a fragment. There will certainly be three, if not four
candidates, and the Republican party can win. We think a good deal of
old Abe Lincoln.