ible. And so even I had one glimpse of a little fleet of fishing-boats stepping bravely out to sea in all that weather.

Some one took my arm and leaned upon it; I turned to see Old Beeson. I do not think he knew me. His lips were moving with words. Leaning close, I distinguished out of the mutter, "the impatience of youth. I had not sufficiently reckoned with it, . . . nor with its indifference toward those who . . . have borne the agony. They planned for themselves. While we were planing for them, they planned for themselves."

Devries from behind his binoculars interrupted with a roar of savage approval: "Well handled! Able seamen every one!"

At that Beeson drew himself erect and turned to the frantic women a face as bloodless as the foam:

"They . . . shall make port in safety. The sea could not . . . it could not . . . lives of such value.

He turned, staggered, and fell. Polly threw herself upon him with wild tears, but Billy Strait, having felt for the heart and found it silent, spread a handkerchief over the face and drew Polly's head to his shoulder.

As for me, I might have been a bit cf driftwood for all the attention they paid me, until finally young Wireless, having fairly tripped over me, recognized me with an abstracted stare and said civilly enough: "You'll be wanting to send a message. I'll attend to it directly, sir.

It was plain enough that with the death of Beeson and the children's departure, the tiny nation's mainspring was broken. I doubted that its machinery would ever be set in motion again.

Yet if the boats ever reached the mainland-not that any shipping news has ever reported such an arrival . . . but somehow, I think with Old Beeson that the sea itself would turn aside from the destruction of that Argosy.

you." His smile broadened, he seemed much amused. Then I remember very distinctly the troubled, weary, careworn expression that passed over his face as he replied: "I wish everybody, Congress, all the people, were like you boys." I could say nothing, could only gaze into his benevolent eyes that seemed to look into my very heart. Presently he asked me how old I was, where I went to school, and a few other questions of like familiar sort. And then again, giving me his hand he said: "Now, you must excuse me; I have important business with this gentleman," indicating the personage with whom he had been conversing when I entered the room. I shook hands with the President, turned and walked to the door, faced about, made my manners, as he, reseating himself in the curious armchair, resumed his interview with the minister of France.

I passed from the room and never again saw that wonderful, kindly face until as one of thousands upon thousands of griefstricken, almost heart-broken fellow countrymen, I passed by his open coffin and beheld for a moment the body of "the murdered President" as it lay in state in the rotunda of the city hall of my native New York.

Through all the years that have passed since I stood in the living presence of the great leader of my people and he laid his hand gently on my head my memory has held an undimmed, imperishable picture of the good and kindly man, the warworn, overwrought President, who, in the unbounded goodness of his heart, turned from his work, his crowding duties, forgetting for a few brief moments his cruel anxieties, to treat with sweet patience and speak gently to a schoolboy who had no claim on his attention and courtesy save that the boy was growing up to be an American citizen, one of the multitude of "the plain people" of whom Lincoln himself quaintly said: "the good Lord must. love them, he made so many of them." This incident of my boyhood, this great event in my life, of all events the most memorable and inspiring, this meeting with Abraham Lincoln, was altogether charming. The memory of it is to me inexpressibly sacred.

When I recall vividly, as I do, the form and face of Lincoln as it appeared to my young eyes, I can appreciate the significance of a remark made to me by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, as he stood modelling "the Chicago Lincoln": "When I began this work I despaired of making a worthy or satisfactory statue. So many, almost all, of the likenesses of Lincoln represent him as ungainly, uncouth, homely, unpicturesque; but when I had made a study of his life, had learned more and more of his character, of his natural nobility and lovableness, his deep and true human sympathy, had read of him, talked of him with men who knew him and loved him, I became more and more convinced that his face must have been the most truly beautiful of all I have tried to model." As my good friend the great sculptor created his mind-picture of Abraham Lincoln which he realized in his masterpiece, so I recall to mind his face and form after all the years that have passed since I, a small boy, stood in the living presence of the greatest of Americans. As I think of him now, his greatness of spirit, his worth, integrity, honesty of purpose, his kindliness, his wit and wisdom, his patience-all shone in his countenance and through his wonderful eyes and, as the man was altogether lovable and admirable in the highest sense, I believe that the face that smiled down upon me years ago was in the highest sense beautiful. That I am justified in my belief there is the testimony of his private secretary and co-biographer, Honorable J. G. Nicolay, who says of him: "There was neither oddity, eccentricity, awkwardness, or grotesqueness in his face, figure, or movement"; and men and women who knew Lincoln remember his "soft, tender, dreamy, patient, loving eyes

the kindest eyes ever placed in mortal head." As to his wisdom, his genius, his inestimable greatness of spirit, "his nobly humane simplicity of character," there is no need to speak.

When Edwin M. Stanton, who was standing by the death-bed of his revered chieftain, closed the eyes of the sacred dead, the great war secretary uttered what seems to me the most fitting and enduring epitaph on Abraham Lincoln:

"There lies a man for the ages."