le Jimmy, looking up into his eyes, but he never noticed
me. He looked at Abraham Lincoln, and 'Abe, I've got the best horse in
the world--he won the race and never drew a long breath;' but Abe paid
no attention to Uncle Jimmy, and I got mad at the big, overgrown
fellow, and wanted him to listen to my hero's story. Uncle Jimmy was
determined that Abe should hear, and repeated the story. 'I say, Abe,
I have the best horse in the world; after all that running he never
drew a long breath.' Then Abe, looking down at my little dancing hero,
said, 'Well, Larkins, why don't you tell us how many short breaths he
drew?' This raised a laugh on Uncle Jimmy, and he got mad, and
declared he'd fight Abe if he wasn't so big. He jumped around until
Abe quietly said: 'Now, Larkins, if you don't shut up I'll throw you
in that water.' I was very uneasy and angry at the way my hero was
treated, but I lived to change my views about _heroes_."

[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

From a photograph in the collection of T.H. Bartlett, of Boston,
Massachusetts.[A] Mr. Bartlett regards this as his earliest portrait
of Mr. Lincoln, but does not know when or where it was taken. This
portrait is also in the Oldroyd Collection at Washington, D.C., and is
dated 1856.]

[Footnote A: The collection of Lincoln portraits owned by Mr. T.H.
Bartlett, the sculptor, is the most complete and the most
intelligently arranged which we have examined. Mr. Bartlett began
collecting fully twenty years ago, his aim being to secure data for a
study of Mr. Lincoln from a physiognomical point of view. He has
probably the earliest portrait which exists, the one here given,
excepting the one used as a frontispiece in our November number. He
has a large number of the Illinois pictures made from 1858 to 1860,
such as the Gilmer picture, which we use as a frontispiece in the
present number, a large collection of Brady photographs, the masks,
Volk's bust, and other interesting portraits. These he has studied
from a sculptor's point of view, comparing them carefully with the
portraiture of other men, as Webster and Emerson. Mr. Bartlett has
embodied his study of Mr. Lincoln in an illustrated lecture which is a
model of what such a lecture should be, suggestive, human, delightful.
All his fine collection of Lincoln portraits Mr. Bartlett has put
freely at our disposal, an act of courtesy and generosity for which
the readers of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, as well as its editors, cannot