bless you!' 'God bless Abraham Lincoln!' 'God bress Massa Linkum!' Those who witnessed this scene will not soon forget it. For a long distance down the Avenue, on my way home, I heard fast young men cursing the President for this act; but all the way the refrain rang in my ears,-'God bless Abraham Lincoln !'

Miss Betsey Canedy, of Fall River, Massachusetts, while engaged in teaching a school among the colored people of Norfolk, Virginia, had in her schoolroom a plaster bust of the President. One day she called some colored carpenters who were at work on the building, and showed it to them, writing down their remarks, some of which were as follows:

"He's brought us safe through the Red Sea." "He looks as deep as the sea himself." "He's king of the United States." "He ought to be king of all the world." "We must all pray to the Lord to carry him safe through, for it 'pears like he's got everything hitched to him." "There has been a right smart praying for him, and it mustn't stop now."

A southern correspondent of the New York Tribune, in Charleston, South Carolina, the week following the assassination, wrote:

"I never saw such sad faces, or heard such heavy heart beatings, as here in Charleston the day the dreadful news came! The colored people -the native loyalists-were like children bereaved of an only and loved parent. I saw one old woman going up the street wringing her hands and saying aloud, as she walked looking straight before her, so absorbed in her grief that she noticed no one,—

"O Lord! O Lord! O Lord! Massa Sam's dead! Massa Sam's dead! O Lord! Massa Sam's dead!'

""Who's dead, Aunty?' I asked her.

"Massa Sam!' she said, not looking at me,renewing her lamentations: 'O Lord! O Lord! Lord! Massa Sam's dead!'

"Who's Massa Sam?' I asked.

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'Uncle Sam!' she said. 'O Lord! Lord!' "I was not quite sure that she meant the President, and I spoke again:

"Who's Massa Sam, Aunty?'

"Mr. Linkum!' she said, and resumed wringing her hands and moaning in utter hopelessness of sorrow. The poor creature was too ignorant to comprehend any difference between the very unreal Uncle Sam and the actual President; but her heart told her that he whom Heaven had sent in answer to her prayers was lying in a bloody grave, and she and her race were leftfatherless."

In 1863, Colonel McKaye, of New York, with Robert Dale Owen and one or two other gentlemen, were associated as a committee to investigate the condition of the freedmen on the coast of North Carolina. Upon their return from Hilton Head they reported to the President; and in the course of the interview Colonel McKaye related the following incident.

He had been speaking of the ideas of power entertained by these people. He said they had an idea of God, as the Almighty, and they had realized in their former condition the power of their masters. Up to the time of the arrival among them of the Union forces, they had no knowledge of any other power. Their masters

fled upon the approach of our soldiers, and this gave the slaves a conception of a power greater than that exercised by them. This power they called "Massa Linkum."

Colonel McKaye said that their place of worship was a large building which they called "the praise house"; and the leader of the meeting, a venerable black man, was known as "the praise man." On a certain day, when there was quite a large gathering of the people, considerable confusion was created by different persons attempting to tell who and what "Massa Linkum” was. In the midst of the excitement the whiteheaded leader commanded silence. "Brederin," said he, "you don't know nosen' what you'se talkin' 'bout. Now, you just listen to me. Massa Linkum, he eberywhar. He know eberyting." Then, solemnly looking up, he added,-"He walk de earf like de Lord!"

Colonel McKaye told me that Mr. Lincoln seemed much affected by this account. He did not smile, as another man might have done, but he got up from his chair, and walked in silence two or three times across the floor. As he resumed his seat, he said, very impressively: "It is a momentous thing to be the instrument, under Providence, of the liberation of a race."

"Upon entering the President's office one afternoon, says a Washington correspondent, "I found Mr. Lincoln busily counting greenbacks. "This, sir,' said he, 'is something out of my usual line; but a President of the United States has a multiplicity of duties not specified in the Constitution or acts of Congress. This is one of them. This money belongs to a poor negro who is a porter in the Treasury Department,

at present very bad with the smallpox. He is now in hospital and could not draw his pay because he could not sign his name. I have been at considerable trouble to overcome the difficulty and get it for him, and have at length succeeded in cutting red tape, as you newspaper men say. I am now dividing the money and putting by a portion labelled, in an envelope, with my own hands, according to his wish'; and he proceeded to indorse the package very carefully." No one witnessing the transaction could fail to appreciate the goodness of heart which prompted the President of the United States to turn aside for a time from his weighty cares to succor one of the humblest of his fellow-creatures in sickness and

sorrow.

Mr. Lincoln's cordial reception of Frederick Douglass, the distinguished anti-slavery orator, also once a slave, was widely made known through that gentleman's own account of it in one of his public lectures.

In August or September, 1864, Mr. Douglass again visited Washington. The President heard of his being in the city, and greatly desiring a second conversation upon points on which he considered the opinion and advice of a man of Mr. Douglass's antecedents valuable, he sent his carriage to the boarding-house where he was staying, with a request that Mr. D. would "come up and take a cup of tea" with him. The invitation was accepted; and probably never before, in our history, was the executive carriage employed to convey such a guest to the White House. Mr. Douglass subsequently remarked that "Mr. Lincoln was one of the few white men he ever passed an hour with, who failed to re

mind him in some way, before the interview terminated, that he was a negro.'

The Two Ruling Ideas of Lincoln's Life.

Schuyler Colfax once said to me that "Mr. Lincoln had two ruling ideas, or principles, which governed his life. The first was hatred of slavery, which he inherited in part from his parents; the other was sympathy with the lowly born and humble, and the desire to lift them up." I know of no better epitaph for his tombstone than this, save that suggested by Theodore Tilton, the editor of the New York Independent,-"He bound the nation, and unbound the slave."

Lincoln's Temperance Principles.

After this ceremony [the formal notification of his nomination for the Presidency] had passed, Mr. Lincoln remarked to the company, that as an appropriate conclusion to an interview so important and interesting as that which had just transpired, he supposed good manners would require that he should treat the committee with something to drink; and opening a door that led into a room in the rear, he called out "Mary! Mary!" A girl responded to the call, to whom Mr. Lincoln spoke a few words in an undertone, and, closing the door, returned again to converse with his guests. In a few minutes the maiden entered, bearing a large waiter, containing several glass tumblers, and a large pitcher in the midst, and placed it upon the centre-table. Mr. Lincoln arose, and gravely addressing the company, said: "Gentlemen, we must pledge our