cheerful face on earth." A new attack of misery and melancholy came upon him. Finally the engagement was renewed and they were married November 4, 1842. The trials and struggles of his home life, bravely and patiently borne for years in silence, form a pathetic story, that was guessed only by his nearest friends. His hard and honest work in the legislature and his growing popularity brought him an election in 1846 as a representative in Congress, and he appeared in Washington, in the House of Representatives, at the same time that Douglas took his seat in the Senate. "By way of getting the hang of the House," he wrote his partner, Herndon, "I made a little speech, and was about as badly scared-and no worse- -as I am when I speak in court. As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I shall do so before long." THE BEGINNING OF HIS GREAT WORK People now knew that slavery was the cause nearest Lincoln's heart. "We have got to deal with this slavery question," he said, "and we have got to give much more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing." At the beginning of the Revolution, negro slavery had been permitted by law in every one of the colonies, though high-minded men in the South, as in the North, opposed it even then. The opposition was strongest in the North, yet for many years after the Revolution, slavery was still permitted in New York and New Jersey. But in the North, negro labor was not of great value for the difficult work of farming and manufacture. There slavery was gradually and easily abolished. And as the country was settled farther and farther west, the new states that were formed in the North were all free states, and in them no man could be held as a slave. In the South, the slaves did well enough for the simple work of growing tobacco, cotton and rice. They had been used profitably for this purpose for more than two hundred years. And on this account, slavery flourished in the South, and the new southern states were all slave states. But the world progresses, and it began to be more and more widely felt that slavery was a great wrong. In 1820, when Lincoln was a small boy in Indiana, the slave trade had been declared "piracy" by the United States government, and by the other great nations of the world. Slaves could no longer be brought from Africa across the ocean. Yet those that were owned in the states of the South, could still be bought and sold like oxen, or any other cattle, and their children were born to a slavery they could not escape. By private sale, but chiefly by public auction, negro husbands and wives, parents and children were sometimes cruelly separated from each other. Slaves could be forced to work as much as fifteen hours a day, and no part of the result of their labor belonged to them, but all of it belonged to their owners. It was forbidden to teach them to read and write. The law allowed them to be shut up and chained, or beaten, or cut with a lash until they fainted from loss of blood. There is no doubt that most of the slaves were well and kindly treated, and often there was great affection between them and their masters. But there were many terrible abuses. And there is also no doubt that the owners had full rights over the slaves, and that the slaves had almost no rights whatever. It was Lincoln who boldly said: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." In Congress he fought hard, but vainly, for a plan to keep slavery out of the enormous territory, which had just been taken from Mexico in war. These vast lands, now made into the many states that lie between Texas and Oregon, were equal in area to Spain, France and Germany added together. Lincoln voted for this "at least forty times," he said. And he proposed and just failed to have a law passed to free gradually the slaves in the District of Columbia. Voting "for the truth rather than for a lie," he gave his support to a measure declaring that the Mexican War had been "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced" by our government. This cost him his seat as congressman. He left Washington despairing 'of ever being able to rouse the people against slavery or to free his country from its curse. Back again in Springfield, disheartened, Lincoln strode along the streets, his gaunt figure in a suit of rusty black, his head bent forward in thought, dark rings beneath his hollow eyes. His hands, were clasped behind his back, melancholy "dripping from him as he walked." Often one of his little sons pattered along beside him, fretfully tugging at his great bony hand in the vain hope of being noticed. "He was a man of sorrows, not sorrows of today or yesterday, but long-treasured and deep," his most intimate friend said of him at this time. He himself often admitted that he had been superstitious from boyhood. The coming of important events marked by a strange dream or a presentiment or in some other mysterious way. For years dark forebodings of the future had filled his mind. Some "great or miserable end" was to be his, and to this fate he was resigned. But happiness seemed almost as natural to him as melancholy. He loved laughter, good stories, the jolly fellowship of men. And he delighted in his children. He would often be seen striding down the main street of Springfield with one boy high on his shoulder, the other following after, hanging to the tail of his long coat. One day both of them were running along beside him crying loudly. "What's the matter with the boys, Mr. Lincoln ?" asked a neighbor. "Just what's the matter with the whole world;" Lincoln replied. "I've got three walnuts and each wants two." He now returned to his profession and the work of the courts. Many of his lawyer friends were growing wealthy. But Lincoln still "rode the circuit,” a gray shawl about his shoulders, carrying a carpet bag, fat with papers and clothing, and a faded green cotton umbrella without a handle, tied with a piece of twine, "A. Lincoln" in large white muslin letters on the inside. He had great need of money. The "national debt" was paid, but he had his family to support, his father, his devoted step-mother and a ne'er-do-well step-brother to help and, after his father's death, a mortgage on the old home to settle. One night, past one o'clock, after Lincoln had been away for a week, his neighbor heard the sound of an axe. Leaving his bed, he saw Lincoln in the moonlight, chopping wood to cook his supper. "Lincoln," they said, "was his own wood chopper, hostler, stableboy and cow-boy clear down to, and even beyond, the time that he was President-Elect of the United States." And now at last, slavery became the great, pressing question before the people. Thirty years before, in 1820, Missouri had been admitted into the Union, as a state in which slavery would be permitted by law. But it was agreed at that time that slavery should |