l fail, be it so; we have the proud
consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of
our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and,
adorned of our hearts in disaster, in chains, in death, we never
faltered in defending."

"ABE'S" "DEFALCATIONS."

Lincoln could not rest for as instant under the consciousness that, even
unwittingly, he had defrauded anybody. On one occasion, while clerking
in Offutt's store, at New Salem, he sold a woman a little bale of goods,
amounting, by the reckoning, to $2.20. He received the money, and the
woman went away.

On adding the items of the bill again to make himself sure of
correctness, he found that he had taken six and a quarter cents too
much.

It was night, and, closing and locking the store, he started out on
foot, a distance of two or three miles, for the house of his defrauded
customer, and, delivering to her the sum whose possession had so much
troubled him, went home satisfied.

On another occasion, just as he was closing the store for the night, a
woman entered and asked for half a pound of tea. The tea was weighed
out and paid for, and the store was left for the night.

The next morning Lincoln, when about to begin the duties of the day,
discovered a four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw at once that he
had made a mistake, and, shutting the store, he took a long walk before
breakfast to deliver the remainder of the tea.

These are very humble incidents, but they illustrate the man's perfect
conscientiousness--his sensitive honesty--better, perhaps, than they
would if they were of greater moment.

HE WASN'T GUILELESS.

Leonard Swett, of Chicago, whose counsels were doubtless among the most
welcome to Lincoln, in summing up Lincoln's character, said:

"From the commencement of his life to its close I have sometimes doubted
whether he ever asked anybody's advice about anything. He would listen
to everybody; he would hear everybody; but he rarely, if ever, asked for
opinions.

"As a politician and as President he arrived at all his conclusions from
his own reflections, and when his conclusions were once formed he never
doubted but what they were right.

"One great public mistake of his (Lincoln's) character, as generally
received and acquiesced in, is that he is considered by the people of
this country as a frank, guileless, and unsophisticated man. There never
was a greater mistake.

"Beneath a smooth sur