Of those effects for which I did the murder-
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law, but 'tis not so above.
There is no shuffling: there the action lies
In its true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can; what can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
Oh, wretched state! Oh, bosom black as death!
Oh, limed soul that, struggling to be free,

terance of the most intense bitterness and satire."

Then, unconsciously assuming the character, Mr. Lincoln repeated, also from memory, Richard's soliloquy, rendering it with a degree of force and power that made it seem like a new creation to me. Though familiar with the passage from boyhood, I can truly say that never till that moment had I fully appreciated its spirit. I could not refrain from laying down my palette and brushes and applauding heartily upon his conclusion, saying, at the same time, half in earnest, that I was not sure but that he had made a mistake in the choice of a profession-considerably, as may be imagined, to his amusement. Mr. Sinclair has since repeatedly said to me that he never heard these choice passages of Shakespeare rendered with more effect by the most famous of modern actors.

Mr. Lincoln's memory was very remarkable. With the multitude of visitors whom he saw daily, I was often amazed at the readiness with which he recalled faces and events, and even names.

The evening of March 25, 1864, was an intensely interesting one to me. It was passed with the President alone in his study, marked by no interruptions. Busy with pen and papers when I entered, he presently threw them aside and commenced talking again about Shakespeare. Little Tad coming in, he sent him to the library for a copy of the plays, from which he read aloud several of his favorite passages. Relapsing into a sadder strain, he laid the book aside, and, leaning back in his chair, said,

"There is a poem that has been a great favorite with me for years, to which my attention was first called when a young man by

a friend, and which I afterward saw and cut from a newspaper, and carried in my pocket, till by frequent reading I had it by heart. I would give a great deal," he added, " to know who wrote it, but I never could ascertain." Then, half closing his eyes, he repeated the poem, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" *

Surprised and delighted, I told him that I should greatly prize a copy of the lines. He replied that he had recently written them out for Mrs. Stanton, but promised that when a favorable opportunity occurred he would give them to me. Varying the subject, he continued:

"There are some quaint, queer verseswritten, I think, by Oliver Wendell Holmes -entitled, 'The Last Leaf,' one of which is to me inexpressibly touching." He then repeated these also from memory. The verse he referred to occurs in about the middle of the poem, and is this:

"The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has pressed

In their bloom,

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year On the tomb."

As he finished this verse he said in his emphatic way, "For pure pathos, in my judgment, there is nothing finer than those six lines in the English language."

A day or two afterward he asked me to accompany him to the temporary studio, at the Treasury Department, of Mr. Swayne, the sculptor, who was making a bust of him. While he was sitting it occurred to me to improve the opportunity to secure the promised poem. Upon mentioning the subject the

* By William Knox. For poem, see Vol. III., p. 30.

sculptor surprised me by saying that he had at his home, in Philadelphia, a printed copy of the verses, taken from a newspaper some years previous. The President inquired if they were published in any connection with his name. Mr. Swayne said that they purported to have been written "by Abraham

Lincoln."

"I have heard of that before, and that is why I asked," returned the President. "But there is no truth in it. The poem was first shown to me by a young man named Jason Duncan, many years ago."

The sculptor was using for a studio the office of the solicitor of the Treasury Department, an irregular room packed nearly full of law-books. Seating myself, I believe, upon a pile of these at Mr. Lincoln's feet, he kindly repeated the lines, which I wrote down one by one as they fell from his lips.

Lov

F. B. CARPENTER.

LOVE'S TRIUMPH.

OVE in fantastic triumph sat,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him
flowed,

For whom fresh pains he did create,
And strange tyrannic power he showed.

From me he took his sighs and tears,

From thee his pride and cruelty; From me his languishment and fears, And every killing dart from thee.

Thus thou and I the god have armed,

And set him up a deity;
But my poor heart alone is harmed,

While thine the victor is, and free.
APHRA BEHN.

VERYTHING looked promising, and we were only waiting for intelligence that our advanceparty had deposited its provisions in safety to begin our transit of the bay. Except a few sledge-lashings and some trifling accoutrements to finish, all was ready.

We were at work cheerfully, sewing away at the skins of some moccasins by the blaze of our lamps, when toward midnight we heard the noise. of steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Ohlsen and Petersen came down into the cabin. Their manner startled me even more than their unexpected appearance on board. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to speak. Their story was a fearful one. They had left their companions in the ice, risking their own lives to bring us the news: Brooks, Baker, Wilson and Pierre were all lying frozen and disabled. Where? They could not tell: somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east; it was drifting heavily round them when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed and care for the others, but the chances were sorely against them. It was in vain to question them further. They had evidently travelled a great distance, for they were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could hardly be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they had come.

My first impulse was to move on the instant with an unencumbered party: a rescue, to be effective, or even hopeful, could not be too prompt. What pressed on my mind most was where the sufferers were to be looked for among the drifts. Ohlsen seemed to have his faculties rather more at command than his associates, and I thought that he might assist us as a guide; but he was sinking with exhaustion, and if he went with us we must carry him.

There was not a moment to be lost, While some were still busy with the new-comers and getting ready a hasty meal, others were rigging out the Little Willie with a buffalo-cover, a small tent and a package of pemmican, and as soon as we could hurry through our arrangements Ohlsen was strapped on in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog-skins and eiderdown, and we were off upon the ice. Our party consisted of nine men and myself. We carried only the clothes on our backs. The thermometer stood at 46°, 78° below the freezing-point.

A well-known peculiar tower of ice called by the men the "Pinnacly Berg" served as our first landmark; other icebergs of colossal size, which stretched in long beaded lines across the bay, helped to guide us afterward, and it was not until we had travelled for sixteen hours that we began to lose our way.

We knew that our lost companions must be somewhere in the area before us, within a radius of forty miles. Mr. Ohlsen, who had been for fifty hours without rest, fell asleep

and Bonsall, who had stood out our severest marches, were seized with trembling-fits and short breath, and in spite of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound bearing I fainted twice on the snow.

Pushing ahead of the party and clambering over some rugged ice-piles, I came to a long level floe which I thought might probably have attracted the eyes of weary men in circumstances like our own. It was a light conjecture, but it was enough to turn the scale, for there was no other to balance it. I gave orders to abandon the sledge and disperse in search of footmarks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in cache, except a small allowance for each man to carry on his person, and poor Ohlsen, now just able to keep his legs, was liberated from his bag. The thermometer had fallen by this time to -49.3°, and the wind was setting in sharply from the north-west. It was out of the question to halt it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. I could not even melt ice for water, and at these temperatures any resort to snow for the purpose of allaying thirst was followed by bloody lips and tongue: it burnt like caustic.

It was indispensable, then, that we should move on, looking out for traces as we went. Yet when the men were ordered to spread themselves, so as to multiply the chances, though they all obeyed heartily, some painful impress of solitary danger, or perhaps it may have been the varying configuration of the ice-field, kept them closing up continually into a single group. The strange manner in which some of us were affected I now attribute as much to shattered nerves as to the di

We had been nearly eighteen hours out without water or food, when a new hope cheered us. I think it was Hans, our Esquimaux hunter, who thought he saw a broad sledge-track. The drift had nearly effaced it, and we were some of us doubtful at first whether it was not one of those accidental rifts which the gales make in the surface-snow. surface-snow. But as we traced it on to the deep deep snow among the hummocks we were led to footsteps, and, following these with religious care, we at last came in sight of a small American flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower down a little Masonic banner hanging from a tent-pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our disabled comrades: we reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.

The little tent was nearly covered. I was not among the first to come up; but when I reached the tent-curtain, the men were standing in silent file on each side of it. With more kindness and delicacy of feeling than is often supposed to belong to sailors, but which is almost characteristic, they intimated their wish that I should go in alone. As I crawled in, and, coming upon the darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from the four poor fellows. stretched on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my weakness and my gratitude together almost overcame me: "They had expected me; they were sure I would come!"

We were now fifteen souls, the thermometer 75° below the freezing-point, and our sole accommodation a tent barely able to contain eight persons; more than half our party were obliged to keep from freezing by walking outside while the others slept. We could not halt long. Each of us took a turn of two hours' sleep, and we prepared for our homeward march.

We took with us nothing but the tent, furs to protect the rescued party and food for a journey of fifty hours; everything else was abandoned. Two large buffalobags, each made of four skins, were doubled up so as to form a sort of sack lined on each side by fur, closed at the bottom, but opened at the top. This was laid on the sledge, the tent, smoothly folded, serving as a floor. The sick, with their limbs sewed up carefully in reindeer-skins, were placed upon the bed of buffalo-robes in a half-reclining posture; other skins and blanket-bags were thrown above them, and the whole litter was lashed together so as to allow but a single opening opposite the mouth for breathing.

This necessary work cost us a great deal of time and effort, but it was essential to the lives of the sufferers. It took us no less than four hours to strip and refresh them, and then to embale them in the manner I have described. Few of us escaped without frost-bitten fingers. The thermometer was at 55.6° below zero, and a slight wind added to the severity of the cold. It was completed at last, however; all hands stood round, and after repeating a short prayer we set out on our retreat. It was fortunate indeed that we were not inexperienced in sledging over the ice. A great part of

our track lay among a succession of hummocks, some of them extending in long lines fifteen and twenty feet high, and so uniformly steep that we had to turn them by a considerable deviation from our direct course; others that we forced our way through far above our heads in height, lying in parallel ridges, with the space between too narrow for the sledge to be lowered into it safely, and yet not wide enough for the runners to cross without the aid of ropes to stay them. These spaces, too, were generally choked with light snow, hiding the openings between the ice-fragments. They were fearful traps to disengage a limb from, for every man knew that a fracture, or a sprain even, would cost him his life. Besides all this, the sledge was top-heavy with its load: the maimed men could not bear to be lashed down tight enough to secure them against falling off. Notwithstanding our caution. in rejecting every superfluous burden, the weight, including bags and tents, was eleven hundred pounds.

And yet our march for the first six hours was very cheering. We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly a mile an hour, and reached the new floes before we were absolutely weary. Our sledge sustained the trial admirably. Ohlsen, restored by hope, walked steadily at the leading-belt of the sledge-lines, and I began to feel certain of reaching our halfway station of the day before where we had left our tent. But we were still nine. miles from it, when, almost without premonition, we all became aware of an alarming failure of our energies. I was, of course, familiar with the benumbed and almost lethargic sensation of extreme cold; and once, when exposed for some hours in the mid