because he had only to go
on in the same way after he became the "servant of the people" that he
had followed when he was "Old Blue Nose's" hired boy and man.

ONE PARTNER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, THE OTHER IN THE POOR HOUSE

Then there was William H. Herndon, known to the world only because he
happened to be "Lincoln's law partner." His advantages were superior to
Lincoln's. And far more than that, he had his great partner's help to
push him forward and upward. But "poor Billy" had an unfortunate
appetite. He could not deny himself, though it always made him ashamed
and miserable. It dragged him down, down from "the President's partner"
to the gutter. That was not all. When he asked his old partner to give
him a government appointment which he had, for years, been making
himself wholly unworthy to fill, President Lincoln, much as he had loved
Billy all along, could not give it to him. It grieved Mr. Lincoln's
great heart to refuse Billy anything. But Herndon did not blame himself
for all that. He spent the rest of his wretched life in bitterness and
spite--avenging himself on his noble benefactor by putting untruths into
the "Life of Lincoln" he was able to write because Abraham Lincoln,
against the advice of his wife and friends, had insisted on keeping him
close to his heart. It is a terrible thing--that spirit of spite! Among
many good and true things he _had_ to say about his fatherly law
partner, he poisoned the good name of Abraham Lincoln in the minds of
millions, by writing stealthy slander about Lincoln's mother and wife,
and made many people believe that the most religious of men at heart was
an infidel (because he himself was one!), that Mr. Lincoln sometimes
acted from unworthy and unpatriotic motives, and that he failed to come
to his own wedding. If these things had been true it would have been
wrong to publish them to the prejudice of a great man's good name--then
how much more wicked to invent and spread broadcast falsehoods which
hurt the heart and injure the mind of the whole world--just to spite the
memory of the best friend a man ever had!

The fate of the firm of Lincoln & Herndon shows in a striking way how
the world looks upon the heart that hates and the heart that loves, for
the hateful junior partner died miserably in an almshouse, but the
senior was crowned with immortal martyrdom in the White House.

THE RIVAL FOR LOVE AND HONORS

Stephen A. Douglas, "the Little Giant," who had been a ri