on the 11th of January, 1825. Died in Berlin, Germany, on the 19th of
December, 1878. His boyhood was passed on a farm near Kennett. He
learned to read at four, began to write at an early age, and from his
twelfth year wrote poems, novels and historical essays, but mostly
poems. In 1837 the family moved to Westchester, and there and at
Unionville he had five years of high-school training. His first poem
printed was contributed to the _Saturday Evening Post_, in 1841, and
those to the _New York Tribune_ from abroad, written in 1844, were
widely read and shortly after his return were collected and published
in _Views Afoot, or Europe Seen With Knapsack and Staff_. With a
friend he bought a printing office in 1846, and began to publish the
_Phoenixville Pioneer_, but it was as a poet that he excelled above
most other vocations.

GETTYSBURG ODE

After the eyes that looked, the lips that spake
Here, from the shadows of impending death,
Those words of solemn breath,
What voice may fitly break
The silence, doubly hallowed, left by him?
We can but bow the head, with eyes grown dim,
And, as a Nation's litany, repeat
The phrase his martyrdom hath made complete,
Noble as then, but now more sadly sweet:
"Let us, the Living, rather dedicate
Ourselves to the unfinished work, which they
Thus far advanced so nobly on its way,
And saved the periled State!
Let us, upon this field where they, the brave,
Their last full measure of devotion gave,
Highly resolve they have not died in vain!--
That, under God, the Nation's later birth
Of freedom, and the people's gain
Of their own Sovereignty, shall never wane
And perish from the circle of the earth!"
From such a perfect text, shall Song aspire
To light her faded fire,
And into wandering music turn
Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern?
His voice all elegies anticipated;
For, whatsoe'er the strain,
We hear that one refrain:
"We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated!"

[Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SON THOMAS ("TAD")]

Benjamin Franklin Taylor, born at Lowville, New York, July 19, 1819.
He was for several years connect