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antagonist has he met, like O'Conor and Brady, who were not trained at his Harvard, and how many a college man has he come into contact with who had no such command of good and choice English as had that early '. rough back woodsman," Lincoln? They are fortunate who have those liberal advantages, but what should be their praise who become scholars without them? Is Lincoln not to be classed among them? With his uncommon abilities, and his untiring application to develop them, if he was not a Chesterfield he was among leaders everywhere to be admired, and he had the applause of the people. Not only was he able to rank with those " highly-educated and powerful men at the bar of Illinois," but did he not rise to be a great constitutional lawyer? Did he not argue such questions with Douglas to be his peer, if not more, in those famous Illinois debates, and did not his superiority give him the presidential nomination? Who will forget his appearance in New York in that canvass, when he rose to meet the highest expectations? Was he not primus inter pares in his Cabinet, as he sat by the side of those illustrious jurists and statesmen, Seward and Chase? He was every inch a President in his towering height in that perilous time when the Union was saved, and his messages to Congress are among the ablest to come from any Executive. Unlike Buchanan, scholar that he was, he was another Jackson to have place alongside of Washington. The young " rough backwoodsman " was the peer of the scholarly Everett in his rhetoric at Gettysburg. His phrase that ours is a "gov ernment of the people, by the people, for the people," is Websterian m utterance; and where did Webster ever give a better interpretation as a great lawyer and statesman of our political system? On one of the old university walls at Oxford there is a letter of Lincoln, written dur ing the Rebellion to a sorrowing mother, in frame there for those students to study as a model of choicest English style. Is not that a university's tribute to his faultless diction? He had genius and industry, and what could have been added? As we think of him, there come to us the words of the Wise Man : " A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men." J. Hervey Cook. Fishkill-on-Hudson, N. Y., April 8, 1902.

NOTES. It was a dull day in the justice court, when a colored belle, radiant in finery, walked in and said blushingly : "Jedge, I want to git yo' to do me a favah." "What is it?" "I want yo' to mahhry me." "I'm sorry, but I am already married." "Huh! Yo' doan' s'pose I'd mahhry any lawyeh man, does yo'?" "What would you marry?" "Jes' nothin' less dan what I'se a-gwine to mahhry — a po'tah on a Pullman call 1" Then she flounced out. "A porter on a Pullman car," laughed the court. He thought it was a joke. Then he counted up his fees for the day, and concluded that it might not be a joke after all. "I see that a Virginia judge has just given a man a year for stealing a straw hat from a store in the day-time," remarked the book-keeper. "That's nothing," chimed in the draft clerk. "I knew a man to get five years for little more than that. It was in Wisconsin. A sudden rainstorm came up one day and the man took an umbrella." "I thought that was justifiable larceny." "Ordinarily, yes; in this case, no. The umbrella was the court's." A man was recently on trial in Michigan for the larceny of two sets of harness, a lap-robe and a- buggy-whip. There seemed to be no doubt of his guilt. The court gave the jury the usual instruction in regard to their duty in ascer taining whether the value of the goods ex ceeded $25. The jury, instead of returning in a few minutes with a verdict, hung out six and one half hours and announced, when interrogated by the court officer at the court's order, that it could not agree. Finally the jury was brought in. "Don't you seem to be able to agree? " asked his honor. The young farmer who had been selected as foreman arose. "We 're agreed," he said, " that the harness is worth thirty dollars and the lap-robe ten, but we 've split on whether the whip sells for fifty cents or a quarter."