ious education, and so placed him in the family of a
clergyman, whom he directed to instruct the little fellow carefully in
the Scriptures. Every day the boy had to commit to memory and recite one
chapter of the Bible. Things proceeded smoothly until they reached that
chapter which details the story of the trial of Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego in the fiery furnace. When asked to repeat these three names
the boy said he had forgotten them.

"His teacher told him that he must learn them, and gave him another day
to do so. The next day the boy again forgot them.

"'Now,' said the teacher, 'you have again failed to remember those names
and you can go no farther until you have learned them. I will give you
another day on this lesson, and if you don't repeat the names I will
punish you.'

"A third time the boy came to recite, and got down to the stumbling
block, when the clergyman said: 'Now tell me the names of the men in the
fiery furnace.'

"'Oh,' said the boy, 'here come those three infernal bores! I wish the
devil had them!'"

Having received their "final answer," the three patriots retired, and at
the Cabinet meeting which followed, the President, in high good humor,
related how he had dismissed his unwelcome visitors.

LINCOLN'S MEN WERE "HUSTLERS."

In the Chicago Convention of 1860 the fight for Seward was maintained
with desperate resolve until the final ballot was taken. Thurlow Weed
was the Seward leader, and he was simply incomparable as a master in
handling a convention. With him were Governor Morgan, Henry J. Raymond,
of the New York Times, with William M. Evarts as chairman of the New
York delegation, whose speech nominating Seward was the most impressive
utterance of his life. The Bates men (Bates was afterwards Lincoln's
Attorney-General) were led by Frank Blair, the only Republican
Congressman from a slave State, who was nothing if not heroic, aided by
his brother Montgomery (afterwards Lincoln's Postmaster General), who
was a politician of uncommon cunning. With them was Horace Greeley, who
was chairman of the delegation from the then almost inaccessible State
of Oregon.

It was Lincoln's friends, however, who were the "hustlers" of that
battle. They had men for sober counsel like David Davis; men of supreme
sagacity like Leonard Swett; men of tireless effort like Norman B. Judd;
and they had what was more important than all--a seething multitude wild
with enthusiasm for "Old Abe."