of the French indemnity money
to its individual claimants. I have carefully examined the
public documents, and thereby find this statement to be wholly
untrue. Of the forty millions of dollars expended in 1838, I
am enabled to say positively that not one dollar consisted of
payments on the French indemnities. So much for that excuse.

"Next comes the post-office. He says that five millions were
expended during that year to sustain that department. By a
like examination of public documents, I find this also wholly
untrue. Of the so often mentioned forty millions, not one
dollar went to the post-office....

"I return to another of Mr. Douglas's excuses for the
expenditures of 1838, at the same time announcing the pleasing
intelligence that this is the last one. He says that
ten millions of that year's expenditure was a contingent
appropriation, to prosecute an anticipated war with Great
Britain on the Maine boundary question. Few words will settle
this. First, that the ten millions appropriated was not made
till 1839, and consequently could not have been expended in
1838; second, although it was appropriated, it has never been
expended at all. Those who heard Mr. Douglas, recollect that
he indulged himself in a contemptuous expression of pity for
me. 'Now he's got me,' thought I. But when he went on to say
that five millions of the expenditure of 1838 were payments of
the French indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five
millions had been for the post-office, which I knew to be
untrue; that ten millions had been for the Maine boundary war,
which I not only knew to be untrue, but supremely ridiculous
also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough to hope that
I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to
go unexposed,--I readily consented that, on the score both of
veracity and sagacity, the audience should judge whether he or
I were the more deserving of the world's contempt."

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1860.--NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

From a first-state proof of an engraving of the Cooper Institute
picture of Lincoln (see McCLURE'S MAGAZINE for February, 1896, first
frontispiece). Made by John C. Buttre, and now in the collection
of W.C. Crane of New York City, through whose courtesy it is here
reproduced.]

These citations show that Lincoln had already learned to handle p