n fostering
ever since he has had the itch to be President. Without the solid South
the Little Giant will never live in the White House. And unless I'm
mightily mistaken, Steve Douglas has had his aye as far ahead as 1860 for
some time."

Another silence followed these words. There was a stout man standing in
the aisle, and he spat deftly out of the open window.

"You may wing Steve Douglas, Abe," said he, gloomily, "but the gun will
kick you over the bluff."

"Don't worry about me, Ed," said Mr. Lincoln. "I'm not worth it."

In a wave of comprehension the significance of all this was revealed to
Stephen Brice, The grim humor, the sagacious statesmanship, and (best of
all)--the superb self sacrifice of it, struck him suddenly. I think it
was in that hour that he realized the full extent of the wisdom he was
near, which was like unto Solomon's.

Shame surged in Stephen's face that he should have misjudged him. He had
come to patronize. He had remained to worship. And in after years, when
he thought of this new vital force which became part of him that day, it
was in the terms of Emerson: "Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates,
and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood."

How many have conversed with Lincoln before and since, and knew him not!

If an outward and visible sign of Mr. Lincoln's greatness were needed,
--he had chosen to speak to them in homely parables. The story of Farmer
Bell was plain as day. Jim Rickets, who had life all his own way, was
none other than Stephen A. Douglas, the easily successful. The ugly
galoot, who dared to raise his eyes only to the pear, was Mr. Lincoln
himself. And the pear was the Senatorship, which the galoot had denied
himself to save Susan from being Mr. Rickets' bride.

Stephen could understand likewise the vehemence of the Republican leaders
who crowded around their candidate and tried to get him to retract that
Question. He listened quietly, he answered with a patient smile. Now and
then he threw a story into the midst of this discussion which made them
laugh in spite of themselves. The hopelessness of the case was quite
plain to Mr. Hill, who smiled, and whispered in Stephen's ear: "He has
made up his mind. They will not budge him an inch, and they know it."

Finally Mr. Lincoln took the scrap of paper, which was even more dirty
and finger-marked by this