often "taking the stump" in the guise of an antislavery orator, amid the applause of his companions.

By this time, Clay, having himself been an unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency, had become Adams's Secretary of State, and was now more than ever regarded as the first man in his party. Although a Kentucky slave-holder, and deeply influenced by the social opinion of his State, he was generously opposed to the "special institution" of the South, and gave his great influence to an abortive scheme for the removal of the whole negro problem by the gradual emancipation of the coloured people and their colonization abroad. The pertinacity with which in later years Lincoln clung to this policy seems to indicate that he had been convinced of its justice in his youth.

But in the backwoods or elsewhere, no lad's life from 14 to 21 can be covered by such rough headings as "Politics," "Work," and "Schooling." Schooling." Lincoln was fond of society, fond of play, fond of adventure; to each he gave himself with zest. He was at every marriage-feast, wrestling-bout, horse-race, and cockfight. He was an admirable mimic, was already collecting a fund of anecdotes, and became a favourite member of the easy and somewhat loose society of Gentryville in the 'twenties. He was on every hand

recognised as the best of companions, yet it seems certain that he himself was anything but loose, while we know that he positively disliked whisky, drinking but little, if any, and for many years none at all, and that he neither chewed tobacco nor indulged in the strange wild oaths cultivated on the frontier.

But nothing could be further from the truth than the conception of Lincoln as a clever, pious young

prig, making of himself a constant example to his dissolute companions. On the contrary, while always marked by an unconscious personal distinction, he regarded the common people, of whom he was one and among whom he always lived, with sincere admiration. "All his life," writes one of his friends,1 "he held that whatsoever was popular-the habit or the sentiment of the masses-could not be essentially wrong." And we may add that a character like Lincoln's could hardly have developed in any but a sound and wholesome social environment.

Though he was so far from handsome, he was courteous, sympathetic, and a favourite with the village girls; and from what we know of his story, it is safe to surmise that his plain face and awkward figure concealed a very tender and susceptible heart. The combination was calculated to cause him no little mortification. He was perhaps enough of a poet to find at least some consolation in the pathetic verses that he loved to learn and even sometimes to indite.

But he comforted himself also by methods less exceptionable, visiting his bitter indignation on those who had injured him, in rough and effective satire. One at least of these performances 2 issued in a personal encounter not creditable to young Lincoln's good taste, though he came out of it the victor. It is not necessary to enter into its details, but they confirm the impression that he was as sensitive as other young men to social slights; while they prove that sometimes, when

1 W. H. Lamon.

2 That connected with the Grigsbys, perhaps the principal people of the village, one of whom married Abe's sister.

he was pressed too far, his usual self-control deserted him, and he became unscrupulous in his vengeance. He had thus good cause, in his own experience, to dread the entrance of passion into controversy; for in his cooler moments he suffered the greatest humiliation in recalling his own violent words and actions. Throughout his life such reminiscences were peculiarly bitter to him.

The chief of his youthful adventures, of which we have any record, was his trading expedition to New Orleans at the age of nineteen. The voyage of more than a thousand miles down the broad winding rivers of the Ohio and Mississippi to that gay metropolis, so different in every respect from the little frontier settlements with which he was familiar, was one of the experiences of his life. And it was a daring enterprise, though not an uncommon one-probably his father had undertaken the journey more than oncefor New Orleans was the principal market of all the Western States, and the river was the only turnpike road to it. None the less, it was not without its serious perils, made, as Lincoln and many another boatman made it, with a cargo of farm produce packed in barrels upon a flat-boat or raft of his own building. He had had, it would seem, some preparation for the venture, having acted for a time as ferry and jobbing boatman on the Ohio. Now he set forth as "bowhand" with the son of his employer, and passing Cairo, came out upon the mysterious high-road of the West," the Father of Waters," as he loved in later years to call it, guiding his frail vessel among the snags and eddies of the ever-winding, widening current: past Memphis, under the bluffs of Vicks

burg, and so by Baton Rouge-where he successfully defended his boat, attacked by negro robbers to its destination. The fascination of those weeks remained with him, and quickened that keen and permanent interest which he always showed in matters relating to the river. He could never doubt that it united all the lands along its course into one, nor could he forget New Orleans the first great city he had seen. His success upon this voyage prompted him to repeat it more than once in later years. It was one of the mile-stones in his career, his first escape from the monotony and narrowness of the backwoods, his first taste of the wider life of men; and it was, besides, a public proof of his ability in an enterprise requiring cool judgment and self-reliance.

The spirit of change was entering into the little household on Pigeon Creek. John Hanks, the abler of the two cousins, and an upright, serious man, had pushed out West again, settling almost in the centre of Illinois, at that time but sparsely peopled. He found the conditions there so much more promising than around Gentryville, that, in the spring of 1830, the Lincolns abandoned their unprofitable farm to follow him. They had at least given the locality a fair trial, and if, after fourteen years, they left it for a better, they can hardly be accused of mere vagabondage.

Death had again broken into the family circle. Apparently before Abe set out for New Orleans, his only sister--a plain, amiable, serious woman, who in many respects resembled him—had died in child-birth after little more than a year of married life. Malarial fevers again and again devastated the community, and

carried off the very cattle. It was no wonder that now, when Abraham was coming into the full strength of his manhood and Mrs Lincoln's own children were fully grown, her two daughters being married, they should decide to set out for what must have seemed to them like a promised land. The very name of the Sangamon district, which they had chosen for their new home, signified "the land where there is plenty to eat."

There is no doubt that Lincoln was attached to Pigeon Creek, with its pathetic associations, and to Gentryville and the people among whom he had grown up. But he was now increasingly conscious of a power within him, perhaps of a destiny before him, incompatible with the circumstances either of a "Southern Scrub" or of a poor farmer in the backwoods of Indiana. The time had come for a change of scene, and just before he entered upon his majority he threw in his lot quite definitely with the enterprising democratic North, and turned his back upon the regions where he and his father had been born, the realm of the Southern aristocrat and his "institution." Sangamon County, Illinois, was to become his home for the next thirty years.

The journey thither was made by the whole party, now numbering thirteen-for Thomas Lincoln seems to have been a sort of leader among his kindred-with all their worldly belongings, in a single roomy waggon behind two yoke of oxen, Abe driving. On their leisurely way-the journey of some 200 miles occupied a fortnight-he contrived to turn many an honest penny as "a peddler of smallwares and notions."