sacred than any you can owe to others, and in that light let them
be respected and observed. It is natural that she should desire to
remain with her relations and friends. As to friends, she could not
need them anywhere--she would have them in abundance here. Give my
kind regards to Mr. ---- and his family, particularly to Miss E. Also
to your mother, brothers and sisters. Ask little E. D. ---- if she
will ride to town with me if I come there again. And, finally, give
---- a double reciprocation of all the love she sent me. Write me
often, and believe me, yours forever,

Lincoln."

HOW LINCOLN AND JUDGE B---- SWAPPED HORSES

From "Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln."

When Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer in Illinois, he and a certain Judge
once got to bantering one another about trading horses; and it was
agreed that the next morning at 9 o'clock they should make a trade,
the horses to be unseen up to that hour, and no backing out, under a
forfeiture of $25.

At the hour appointed the Judge came up, leading the sorriest-looking
specimen of a horse ever seen in those parts. In a few minutes Mr.
Lincoln was seen approaching with a wooden saw-horse upon his
shoulders. Great were the shouts and the laughter of the crowd, and
both were greatly increased when Mr. Lincoln, on surveying the Judge's
animal, set down his saw-horse, and exclaimed: "Well, Judge, this is
the first time I ever got the worst of it in a horse trade."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AS A MAN OF LETTERS[3]

BY HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

From "Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature."

Born in 1809 and dying in 1865, Mr. Lincoln was the contemporary of
every distinguished man of letters in America to the close of the war;
but from none of them does he appear to have received literary impulse
or guidance. He might have read, if circumstances had been favorable,
a large part of the work of Irving, Bryant, Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson,
Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, Longfellow, and Thoreau, as it came from the
press; but he was entirely unfamiliar with it apparently until late in
his career and it is doubtful if even at that period he knew it well
or cared greatly for it. He was singularly isolated by circumstances
and by temperament from those influences which usually determine,
within certain limits, the quality and character of a man's style.

And Mr. Lincoln had a style,--a distinctive, individual,
characteristi