elected President, making over sixty speeches.

In 1843 he was elected to the State Senate. Also manufactured shoes on
an extended scale for the southern market. The old Whig party, with whom
he had been so earnestly allied, proving itself unable to cope with the
slave power, by rejecting the anti-slavery resolutions at the convention
of 1843, he withdrew from it. Later, he was a conspicuous figure in the
organization of the new Free Soil party, being the Chairman of the
committee in his State, and editor of the _Boston Republican_. In
1850-52 he was president of the State Senate, and in '52 presided at the
Free Soil contention at Pittsburgh. The next year he was the Free Soil
candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, but was defeated. In 1855 he
was chosen United States Senator, where he distinguished himself. When
his colleague, Mr. Sumner, was attacked by Preston S. Brooks, Mr. Wilson
fearlessly denounced it as a cowardly, not to say dastardly assault. He
was immediately challenged by Mr. Brooks, but declined on the ground
that dueling is a barbarous custom which the law of the country has
branded as a crime. He was one of the leaders in the new Republican
party movement.

During the civil war his labors were indefatigable for the Union, and in
1872 he was elected on that ticket with Grant by an overwhelming
majority.

He died in office, November 22nd, 1875, and the boy shoemaker was
mourned by a great nation. Truly, the price of success is patient toil.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

If one reads the life of Abraham Lincoln they are thoroughly convinced
that the possibilities of our country are indeed very great. He was born
in Hardin county, Kentucky, on the 14th day of February, 1809, of very
poor parents, who lived in a log cabin.

Scarcely a boy in the country will read these lines but has tenfold the
opportunity to succeed in the world as had Abraham Lincoln. When he was
still a little boy his parents moved to Indiana, which was then a
wilderness. Here, in a log cabin, he learned to read under the tuition
of his mother and afterward received nearly a year's schooling at
another log cabin a mile away,--nearly a year's schooling and all the
schooling he ever received from a tutor!

But he loved books, he craved knowledge and eagerly did he study the few
books which fell in his way. He kept a scrap-book into which he copied
the striking passages and this practice enabled him to gain an
education. Here he grew