Dr. Holland says: "When Lincoln terminated his labors for Orfutt, every one trusted him. He was judge, arbitrator, referee, umpire, authority in all disputes, games, matches of man-flesh and horse-flesh; a pacificator in all quarrels ; everybody's friend; the best natured, the most sensible, the best informed, the most modest and unassuming, the kindest, gentlest, roughest, strongest, best young fellow in all New Salem and the region round about."

This is a just encomium; but it never could have been said of him but for his unbending honesty, a quality for which he was known from his boyhood. The honest boy makes the honest man.

When Lincoln became a lawyer, he carried to the bar this habitual honesty. His associates were often surprised by his utter disregard of self-interest, while they could but admire his conscientious defense of what he considered right. One day a stranger called to secure his services.

"State your case," said Lincoln. A history of the case was given, when Lincoln astonished him by saying :

"I cannot serve you; for you are wrong, and the other party is right."

"That is none of your business, if I hire and pay you for taking the case," retorted the man.

"Not my business!" exclaimed Lincoln. "My business is never to defend wrong, if I am a lawyer. I never undertake a case that is manifestly wrong."

"Well, you can make trouble for the fellow," added the applicant.

"Yes," replied Lincoln, fully aroused; "there is no doubt but that I can gain the case for you, and set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads. I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars, which rightly belongs as much to the woman and her children as it does to you; but I won't do it."

"Not for any amount of pay?" continued the stranger. "Not for all you are worth," replied Lincoln. "You must remember that some things which are legally right are not morally right. I shall not take your case."

"I don't care a snap whether you do or not!" exclaimed the man, angrily, starting to go.

"I will give you a piece of advice without charge," added

Lincoln. "You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to make six hundred dollars some other way."

Judge Treat gives the following: "A case being called for hearing in the court, Mr. Lincoln stated that he appeared for the appellant, and said, 'This is the first case I have ever had in this court, and I have, therefore, examined it with great care. As the court will perceive, by looking at the abstract of the record, the only question in the case is one of authority. I have not been able to find any authority to sustain my side of the case, but I have found several cases to sustain the other side. I will now give these cases, and then submit the case.

Some lawyers present thought he was crazy, not being accustomed to look for "exact justice."

He undertook the celebrated Patterson trial, a case of murder, supposing the accused was innocent. Before the evidence was all in, he became satisfied that the man was guilty, and withdrew from the case, leaving his partner to conduct it. The accused was acquitted, but Lincoln would not take a cent of the one thousand dollars paid to his partner for services.

Lincoln's professional life abounded with similar incidents, leading Judge David Davis to say, "The framework of his mental and moral being was honesty. He never took from a client, even when the cause was gained, more than he thought the service was worth and the client could afford to pay."

The time came, in 1860, when Lincoln's honesty was needed to save the nation. Slavery threatened to overthrow the Republic unless it was allowed to become universal. North and South there was distrust, alienation, and apprehension. The retiring president had governed for the South, in the interest of bondage. Loyal citizens had lost confidence in public men. The next president must be one whose character would challenge the respect and confidence of loyal people, or the ship of state would go under in the fearful storm gathering. Abraham Lincoln was the man. He could be trusted. Friends of the Union gave him their implicit confidence, and became a unit. His honesty had reached its highest value and saved the Republic by destroying slavery.

CHAPTER IV.

JOHN DAVIS LONG.

ON THE PROBLEM OF LIFE- HIS ANCESTRY LIFE IN OXFORD COUNTY, MAINE AT HEBRON ACADEMY - COLLEGE CAREER -AS A LAW STUDENT -THE LAWYER POLITICAL BEGINNINGS GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS SECRETARY OF THE NAVY PERSONAL COMPANIONS.

CHARACTERISTICS.

CHOICE OF

The problem of life is never solved, and yet the method of its solution is as plain as daylight, and that method is progress,

progress, progress,-progress in physical and material circumstance, in intellectual enlargement and force, in moral sentiment, in æsthetic refinement, in personal character.

No man is altogether the master of his own character or inclination, but I should say the personal elements of success are natural capacity and industry. With these inust go, however, thoroughness in intellectual culture and moral impress on char

acter.

My maturer experience has shown me that nothing is so important to a young man in the formation of character as the influence, inspiration, elevation of a riper or superior mind, sensibly or insensibly holding him to higher standards, not in the goody-goody sense, but in the appreciation of his own powers, capacities and obligations.

HERE is a type of character which we have come to look upon as distinctively American. It is compounded of keen intelligence, celerity in action, readiness of resource, large toleration, easy good humor, confident optimism, and entire independence. A shrewd wit flavors it, a ready speech belongs to it, a fine and tender sentiment lies

at its heart. It scorns conventionalities, though it easily takes on the polish of the great world. Through all its knowledge of men and things we detect that racy smack of the soil, that solidity of principle, that intense conviction of a great future for our country, which mark the true home-bred American.

To this type belongs the subject of this sketch, and we are to learn to what influences it owes its existence; from what strong sources its springs are fed.

Back of a man, as the foundation of his personality, lie his ancestors. We do not gather figs of thistles. Education and environment do much, no doubt, to mold the outward show, but, given ordinary conditions of wholesome country living in childhood, an individual is apt to develop on pre-determined lines, and it is characteristic of the strong American to promptly select his own surroundings as soon as he is out of leading strings, to bring his own force to play on circumstance, and to elect his own form of education, assimilating what is congenial, rejecting the superfluous, moved by a keen natural instinct of what he needs.

The more one studies our men of mark, the more one becomes convinced that they are the lords, not the slaves of circumstance, and that if they stand out from the multitude of their fellows who had a similar start in life, it is owing to that happy combination of qualities which makes them masters of the event. What America gives them is the chancethat they avail themselves of it is their proof of ability.

First of all, then, we must examine the stock to understand the shoot.

John Davis Long came of a line of Massachusetts ancestry which extends back to the "Mayflower" and the "Ann." For whatever reason the Pilgrim Fathers came to this country, the fact of their coming at all shows them to have been daring, resolute, enterprising men, afraid of no risks so long as they were assured of a chance to carry out their own ideas without government interference. Bold were they and willful, full of stern convictions, unflinching amid perils unknown, scornful of luxury, familiar with hardship, in which they had the Anglo-Saxon's joy. Labor was their pleasure, religion their meat and drink. Hard and narrow as no doubt many of them were, they were clear

sighted, conscientious, and tenacious, inspired by that practical imagination which is the endowment of the English race, an imagination which has led to the planting of a thousand colonies, and the development of them along lines once purely ideal; an imagination which could picture the desert blossoming as the rose, and see the future city in the hamlet. Aided by it the great race has spread over the face of the globe, building up mighty states, enforcing its theories of life and free government along its conquering path. Such a race stamps its characteristics upon its children to remotest generations.

On his father's side, Mr. Long hails from Plymouth. His grandfather was a descendant of the pilgrim Thomas Clark, who came over in the "Ann" in 1623, and his grandmother Bathsheba Churchill's forbear, Richard Warren, was one of the passengers in the Mayflower." His mother's progenitor, Dolar Davis, came with the emigration of 1634 and settled first in Cambridge and died in Barnstable. His wife was Margery Willard, the sister of Major Simon Willard of Concord, Mass.

Thus we see by what right their descendant holds many of the qualities which stand for success: steadfastness, endurance, capacity, and a genius for hard work-the key perhaps, to many a triumph.

From the strong stock which first occupied Massachusetts went forth into the Province of Maine a class of especially vigorous settlers, whose descendants still return from time to time to the parent state, to administer its affairs and lead in its councils, with the freshness and force characteristic of the sturdy men of the Pine Tree state. Among these pioneers went in 1806, sailing by packet from Plymouth to Salem and thence overland in a pioneer's wagon, Thomas Long, the grandfather of John D. Long.

Zadoc Long, the latter's father, was then six years old, and often told him of the mile-long hill at their journey's end which they had to climb to reach the half-finished house and half-cleared farm which was to be their future home in Buckfield, Maine. The other men who settled Oxford county were a sturdy set, whose descendants are well-known to fame. They were poor, as everybody was poor in those parts, but shrewd, intelligent, thinking men, who read books and talked