Mem-bers of Con-gress and oth-ers tried to set-tle the trou-ble but to no a-vail, and there seemed no way a-head but a tri-al of the is-sue on the bat-tle-field.
Lin-coln was in Spring-field and could do naught then, save with his pen and words of ad-vice to Bu-chan-an who was then Pres-i-dent. With great sad-ness he read what had been done at the South.
THE LINCOLN HOME IN SPRINGFIELD.
There was still much to do in Spring-field in his plans to leave his law work, and Mr. Lin-coln felt that a great load of care was up-on him, and the task, which in a few brief months would be his, was sure to be more e-ven than that which fell to the first great Chief, George Wash-ing-ton. There were times when he spent whole days in deep thought, si-lent and sad.
Still, in the midst of all this work, there came times when in a light-er vein he would show mirth at in-ci-dents as they came up. A bus-i-ness trip had to be made. A group of small girls was met at the house of a friend. They gazed at the great man as if they would speak to him. He kind-ly asked them if he could help them in an-y way. One of them said that she would dear-ly like to have him write his name for her.
Lin-coln said he saw oth-er young girls there and thought that if he wrote his name for but one, the rest would “feel bad-ly.”
The child then told him there were “eight all told.” Then, with one of his bright smiles the kind man asked for eight slips of pa-per and pen and ink. He wrote his name so that each child might have it to take home with her.
There was a lit-tle girl, that same au-tumn, whose home was on the shores of Lake E-rie. She had a por-trait of Lin-coln and a pic-ture of the log-cab-in which he helped build for his fa-ther in 1830. She had great pride in Mr. Lin-coln, and it was her wish that he should look as well as he could. So she asked her moth-er if she might write a note to Mr. Lin-coln and ask him if he would let his beard grow, for she thought this would make his face more pleas-ing.
The moth-er thought this plan of her child was strange, but know-ing that she was a strong Re-pub-li-can, said there could be no harm in writ-ing such a let-ter. So the let-ter was writ-ten and sent to “Hon. A-bra-ham Lin-coln, Esq., Spring-field, Il-li-nois.”