rned tolerably well how the ship was managed, and I should
have liked best to enlist in the navy; but Eric would not hear of it.

It is probable that my father is fighting against us by sea, so it is
better for me to be in the army.

I have seen Lilian again. I can say to you alone that we are engaged.
Do not say that I am but seventeen, and she but fourteen years old.
Events have made us older. Why, Franklin wanted to marry Miss Read,
when he was only eighteen. We have vowed to belong to one another when
the war is over.

Please let these lines be seen by no eyes but yours.

We have been at Washington; I have seen the Acropolis of the New World.
I wished first to make a pilgrimage to Franklin's grave, but it was
better for me that I could first see one of his greatest successors,
Abraham Lincoln.

I have seen, for the first time, a man of immortal glory. Face to face
with him, I have uttered the name which will be handed down to
posterity. Those lips, whose words now resound throughout the world of
to-day, and shall be reechoed by future ages, have pronounced my name.
I have looked on greatness, and how simple it is!

It was at Carlsbad, in the course of that memorable conversation,--I do
not remember much of it, but this struck me,--that some one, the
Cabinetsrath, I think, said: "He who has walked through a portrait
gallery of his ancestors, traverses the whole of life accompanied, as
it were, by those eyes." Oh, from Lincoln's eyes the spirit of Socrates
and Aristides, the spirit of Moses, of Washington, of Franklin, gazed
upon me. And then I felt those to be the forefathers whom every one can
earn for himself by honorable labor, by loyalty and self-sacrifice. I
have the loftiest ancestry, and I will be worthy of it.

I enclose a photograph of Lincoln. He resembles Weidmann, not in
appearance, but in the impression he makes on one. I told him about
Adams, and how unhappy the negro was that he could not enter the army,
but could only be employed on fortifications. Lincoln told me to trust
mature discretion, and not to forget, in the exuberance of youth, that
we must use all means in our power to bring about an understanding, in
order to be justified before our own conscience and before God, if
obliged to go further, saying that this was a fraternal strife, a war,
not of annihilation, but of reconciliation.

I should like to enter a negro regiment, and told him so. He was
silent, and only laid his broad, powe