a Burns. All great natures, as biography
everywhere attests, have fine instincts--this chivalrous sympathy for
the brute creation.

Lincoln's nature was that of a champion for the right. He was a born
knight, and, strangely enough, his first battles in life were in defense
of the turtles or terrapins. He was a boy of powerful strength, and he
used it roughly to maintain his cause. He is said to have once exclaimed
that the turtles were his brothers.

The early days of spring in the old forests are full of life. The Sun
seems to be calling forth his children. The ponds become margined with
green, and new creatures everywhere stir the earth and the waters. Life
and matter become, as it were, a new creation, and one can believe
anything when he sees how many forms life and matter can assume under
the mellowing rays of the sun. The clod becomes a flower; the egg a
reptile, fish, or bird. The cunning woodchuck, that looks out of his
hole on the awakening earth and blue sky, seems almost to have a sense
of the miracle that has been wrought. The boy who throws a stone at him,
to drive him back into the earth, seems less sensible of nature than he.
It is a pleasing sight to see the little creature, as he stands on his
haunches, wondering, and the brain of a young Webster would naturally
seek to let such a groundling have all his right of birth.

One day, when the blue spring skies were beginning to glow, Abraham went
out to play with his companions. It was one of his favorite amusements
to declaim from a stump. He would sometimes in this way recite long
selections from the school Reader and Speaker.

He had written a composition at school on the defense of the rights of
dumb animals, and there was one piece in the school Reader in which he
must have found a sympathetic chord, and which was probably one of those
that he loved to recite. It was written by the sad poet Cowper, and
began thus:

"I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail,
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live."

As Abraham and his companions were playing in the warm sun, one said:

"Make a speech for us, Abe. Hip, hurrah! You've only to nibble a pen to
make poetry, and only to moun