In this series of articles already have been depicted several phases of love - the greatest and highest human passion. First was shown the blind, pathetic, almost servile devotion of the great Napoleon; then the ardent passion of Lord Nelson and the incomparable Emma; then the dignified and stately wooing of the Grand Monarque; then the romance, fantastic but intensely human, of Sheridan, a man of letters.

The tragedy of love, however, as yet has not been mentioned; not yet has been shown a man who, seeking for love, found only bitterness. Such a man Was Abraham Lincoln. Spurred on by disappointment, he set out alone along the road of action. Finally fame crowned his efforts; he was hailed, and hailed rightly, as the greatest of Americans, but, as he himself alone knew", the emblems of his power served but to mask the misery and anguish of a broken heart.

Within fifty years, although burdened and weighed down with dis ad vantages, he climbed from the lowest to the highest rung on the ladder of success. He lacked education, he lacked influence, and, although in Republican America a man can rise more quickly than in any other country, nowhere are and were class distinctions more sharply marked than there. In his case, moreover, not even once would Fate allow the stern realities of life to be softened by the sweet and soothing influence of sentiment.

With Lincoln's career, however, as a politician, as a statesman, and as an administrator, this article is not concerned. It is not concerned with the problems of American slavery, or the story of the great

Civil War. These form a romance of history. It is Lincoln the man who here will be con sidered, the man who controlled the destinies of America during the most critical years of her national existence, the man who was born in a log hut in a forsaken backwood, and died, by an assassin's hand, the ruler of a mighty people.

Never was a great man more lowly born. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was devoid both of ambition and ability. A thriftless pioneer in a "southern" backwood, he could neither read nor write, and his sole concern in life was to provide himself and his family with the requirements of a day. His mother, however, was of a different calibre. "All I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to her," Abraham declared on one of the few occasions in his later life when he made reference to his origin.

Abraham Lincoln, Presidant of the United States, whose brilliant and successful career ended with a dastardly assassination in 1865.

Abraham Lincoln, Presidant of the United States, whose brilliant and successful career ended with a dastardly assassination in 1865.

Love

Although her antecedents Were doubtful, Mrs. Thomas Lincoln Was one of those remarkable Women whom Nature educates, and who are possessed of an innate refinement. She understood her son, she saw in him the potentialities of future greatness, and her death Was the first and greatest sorrow in his life. She died in 1816, while Abraham Was still a child, and the vision of the mother whom he loved being buried on a remote farm in far Kentucky, without ceremony, remained with him always.

Amid the environment of his youth Abraham walked as a stranger; to manual labour he showed neither inclination nor adaptability; he was a dreamer, a thinker, and his craving for learning was insatiate.

Herndon has left a delightful picture of the boy moving about his father's cabin "with a piece of chalk, writing and ciphering on boards and on the flat side of hewn logs." And then, declares the biographer, when every available space "had been filled with his letters he would erase them, and begin anew."

Although his surroundings may have been uncongenial, he may have been misunderstood, he may have been cramped intellectually, yet it was during the days of his youth that Lincoln learned to know the people whom later he Was called upon to govern. It was during his early training that he learned the invaluable lessons of tolerance and sympathy. It was the healthy pioneer life that enabled him to develop into a fine but uncouth figure of manhood, the most American of all Americans.

Nobody, however, was more fully conscious of his own deficiencies than Was Abraham Lincoln; the question of his personal appearance and clothes was a constant torment to him, and in the society of Women he Was always painfully bashful. "On one occasion," records his friend Ellis, "while we were boarded at the tavern, there came an old lady, her son, and three stylish daughters from the State of Virginia, who stopped for two or three Weeks, and during their stay I do not remember Mr. Lincoln ever appearing at the same table with them."

This was during his residence at New Salem. He moved thither in 1831, when he decided to leave his father's hut, and to go out into the world to seek his fortune. His initial efforts as a shopkeeper, however, were not successful. This, no doubt, was due partly to the fact that Lincoln was now, as always he remained, a wretched financier, partly to his dislike for women, but mainly to the fact that his whole nature was summoning his activities to the wider field of politics.

A strange, mysterious figure, clad in flax and tow pantaloons, about five inches too short in the leg, no vest or coat, a calico shirt, blue yarn socks, and "a straw hat, old style, Without a band," he devoted every one of his spare moments to stump oratory.

New Salem, moreover, was the scene of Lincoln's first romance. Here, naturally, he Was thrown often into the society of the local innkeeper, a man named Rutledge. Now, Rutledge had a daughter, a girl with fair complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair. "She Was pretty, slightly slender . about five feet two inches high, and weighed in the neighbourhood of one hundred and twenty pounds. She was beloved by all who knew her."