a great man had fallen. They felt that this
country had lost its leading statesman, its noblest patriot, its
worthiest citizen.

Rufus Choate, who had succeeded him as the foremost lawyer in New
England, delivered a great oration upon his life and character. He said:

"Look in how manly a sort, in how high a moral tone, Mr. Webster
uniformly dealt with the mind of his country.

"Where do you find him flattering his countrymen, indirectly or
directly, for a vote? On what did he ever place himself but good
counsels and useful service?

"Who ever heard that voice cheering the people on to rapacity, to
injustice, to a vain and guilty glory?

"How anxiously, rather, did he prefer to teach, that by all possible
acquired sobriety of mind, by asking reverently of the past, by
obedience to the law, by habits of patient labor, by the cultivation of
the mind, by the fear and worship of God, we educate ourselves for the
future that is revealing."

THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

[Illustration: _ABRAHAM LINCOLN_.]

THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

* * * * *

I.--THE KENTUCKY HOME.

Not far from Hodgensville, in Kentucky, there once lived a man whose
name was Thomas Lincoln. This man had built for himself a little log
cabin by the side of a brook, where there was an ever-flowing spring of
water.

There was but one room in this cabin. On the side next to the brook
there was a low doorway; and at one end there was a large fireplace,
built of rough stones and clay.

The chimney was very broad at the bottom and narrow at the top. It was
made of clay, with flat stones and slender sticks laid around the
outside to keep it from falling apart.

In the wall, on one side of the fireplace, there was a square hole for a
window. But there was no glass in this window. In the summer it was
left open all the time. In cold weather a deerskin, or a piece of
coarse cloth, was hung over it to keep out the wind and the snow.

At night, or on stormy days, the skin of a bear was hung across the
doorway; for there was no door on hinges to be opened and shut.

There was no ceiling to the room. But the inmates of the cabin, by
looking up, could see the bare rafters and the rough roof-boards, which
Mr. Lincoln himself had split and hewn.

There was no floor, but only the bare ground that had been smoothed and
beaten until it was as level and hard as pavement.

For chairs there were only blocks o