wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He
asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his
wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not
want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a
dollar for it. Without further examination, I put it away in the store
and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I
came upon the barrel, and, emptying it upon the floor to see what it
contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of
Blackstone's Commentaries. I began to read those famous works, and I had
plenty of time; for during the long summer days, when the farmers were
busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more
I read"--this he said with unusual emphasis--"the more intensely
interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly
absorbed. I read until I devoured them."

A JOB FOR THE NEW CABINETMAKER.

This cartoon, labeled "A Job for the New Cabinetmaker," was printed in
"Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper" on February 2d, 1861, a month and
two days before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated President of the United
States. The Southern states had seceded from the Union, the Confederacy
was established, with Jefferson Davis as its President, the Union had
been split in two, and the task Lincoln had before him was to glue the
two parts of the Republic together. In his famous speech, delivered a
short time before his nomination for the Presidency by the Republican
National Convention at Chicago, in 1860, Lincoln had said: "A house
divided against itself cannot stand; this nation cannot exist half slave
and half free." After his inauguration as President, Mr. Lincoln went
to work to glue the two pieces together, and after four years of bloody
war, and at immense cost, the job was finished; the house of the Great
American Republic was no longer divided; the severed sections--the North
and the South--were cemented tightly; the slaves were freed, peace was
firmly established, and the Union of states was glued together so well
that the nation is stronger now than ever before. Lincoln was just the
man for that job, and the work he did will last for all time. "The New
Cabinetmaker" knew his business thoroughly, and finished his task of
glueing in a workmanlike manner. At the very moment of its completion,
five days after the surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox, the