dition of concrete walks, fine lights, well kept lawns and flower plots reflects credit and its rest benches bring comfort to Beardstown's present population. There is another relic of Beard's-the most historical of all, and Beardstown's most interesting shrine-as dear to this city as Faneuil Hall, or Old South Church is to Boston; or Independence Hall, or the Betsy Ross house is to Philadelphia, and that is Cass County's first court house, now our City Hall of Justice and Administration, Which faces Beard's park, and which in 1844 was erected under contract for the county by Thomas Beard. It is as classic as Carpenter's Hall of the Colonial period and as sacred as any hall of justice on the continent, because in it has Justice swung her equiposed balance, without a tip to either arm we trust, during many years; because over its right to be the county's administrative center have the hottest battles been fought locally, and because within its walls, America's greatest citizen and president pleaded and won the cause of freedom from a charge of murder for one of his befriended clients in a case, which, because of Lincoln's shrewd methods of cross examination, whereby in the use of an Almanac, he confounded the star witness against him and proved his testimony false, has been extolled in all the nation and added a brilliant plume for the brow of "honest Abe", before he was thought of as a candidate for the White House. While Lincoln's association with this Hall may be its chief glory, the name of Thomas Beard as contractor and builder is not a mean historical notoriety. Should it look for more honors to add to its sanctity might be said that at least one of the oldest congregations of this city was organized within its walls and for over a year conducted its services within the court room. As this was before Mr. Beard's death, it is not impossible, nor a wild flight of the imagination, to conceive that he may have been a witness at this church's founding or organization. This congregation erected in 1850 its first building at 4th and Lafayette streets. But the murder trial of Duff Armstrong takes precedence of all other interesting incidents connected with this Hall. The story of it is well and minutely told in an article by Hon. J. N. Gridley of Virginia, and published in the Illinois State Historical Society's Journal of April, 1910. It would be interesting to quote at length from the article here, but we refer the interested reader to the article itself and turn to another and the last of Beard's historic landmarks. This was his summer home in the bluffs, and has just given way to Time's devouring tooth, as it was razed this very Spring. In 1836 Thomas Beard, having found fortune smiled upon him, bought 560 acres of land at the bluffs to the northeast of town, where this skirting rim of land elevation forms an obtuse angle of about 240 degrees in the frame it builds of the eastern and southern sides for the Illinois and Sangamon River valleys. It is six miles from town and located just east of the Brick School House (which, by the way, was built by Beard), where the bluffs shove out this elbow. The property is now the possession of Mrs. Ella Seaman, widow of the late Fred Seaman. Here Mr. Beard reared his summer home, located on the first terrace of bluff land in the shape of a commodious bungalow of oak and walnut. He surrounded the same with choice orchards and vineyards and opened the house to hospitality, sociability and domestic bliss. Many were the occasions when these three sisters like sweet graces, presided here, and many are the memories of our few surviving octagenarians of social functions enjoyed here: and many the stories told of the choice and luscious fruits grown in these hillside orchards. Few of the fruit trees survive and hardly any of the choice grapes that once grew here. There are two or three chestnut trees in the rear of the house-very rare arborial specimens for Illinois-which Mr. Zuar E. Maine, a relative and townsman, recently told the writer his father had brought as nuts from the northern part of Ohio, when in 1837 he moved here at the solicitation of Mr. Beard, and |