nct from the decimals of his cabinet,--the deeper grows my faith
in his sterling wisdom. Standing a head and shoulders above the other
men in power, he is the object at which the capricious lightnings of
the storm first strike; and were he a man of wax, instead of the grand
old rock he is, there would be nothing left of him but a shapeless and
inert mass of pliable material by this time. There are deep traces of
the storm upon his countenance, my boy; but they are the sculpture of
the tempest on a natural block of granite, graduating the features of
young simplicity into the sterner lineaments of the mature sublime, and
shaping one of those strong and earnest faces which God sets, as
indelible seals, upon the ages marked for immortality. Abused and
misrepresented by his political foes, alternately cajoled and
reproached by his other foes,--his political friends,--he still pursues
the honest tenor of the obvious Right, and smiles at calumny. His
good-nature, my boy, is a lamp that never goes out, but burns, with a
steady light, in the temples of his mortality through all the dark
hours of his time:

"As some tall cliff that rears its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its base the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

They tell a story about the Honest Abe which this good pen of mine
cannot refrain from writing. A high moral, political chap from the
Sixth Ward, having learned that there was a pleasing clerical vacancy
in the Treasury Department, sought a hasty interview with the Honest
Abe, and says he:

"I am a member of our excellent National Democratic Organization, which
is at this moment eligible for office, on the score of far more true
loyalty to the Union of our forefathers than can be found in any other
organization of the present distracting period. I will admit," says the
genial chap, in a fine burst of honesty, "that our Organization has
done much for the sake of the South in times past; I will admit that we
have seemingly sided with the sunny South for the sake of our party. I
will admit," says this candid chap, with a slight cough, "that our
excellent Democratic Organization has at times seemed to sympathize
with our wayward sisters for the sake of itself _as_ an Organization.
But now," says the impressive chap majestically, "having heard the
recent news from Sumter, the excellent Organization of which I am a
part, stan