LINCOLN'S FAMILIARITY WITH SHAKESPEARE.

163

took, or as he idled by the streams-for he was a famous fisherman—and Lincoln soon became one of his constant companions. The taste he formed in company with Kelso he retained through life.

William D. Kelley records an incident which shows that Lincoln had a really intimate knowledge of Shakespeare. Mr. Kelley had taken McDonough, an actor, to call at the White House, and Lincoln began the conversation by saying:

"I am very glad to meet you, Mr. McDonough, and am grateful to Kelley for bringing you in so early, for I want you to tell me something about Shakespeare's plays as they are constructed for the stage. You can imagine that I do not get much time to study such matters, but I recently had a couple of talks with Hackett-Baron Hackett, as they call him-who is famous as Jack Falstaff, from whom I elicited few satisfactory replies, though I probed him with a good many questions.'

"Mr. McDonough," continues Mr. Kelley, "avowed his willingness to give the President any information in his possession, but protested that he feared he would not succeed where his friend Hackett had failed. 'Well, I don't know,' said the President, for Hackett's lack of information impressed me with a doubt as to whether he had ever studied Shakespeare's text, or had not been content with the acting edition of his plays.' He arose, went to a shelf not far from his table, and having taken down a well-thumbed volume of the 'Plays' of Shakespeare, resumed his seat, arranged his glasses, and having turned to Henry VI.' and read with fine discrimination an extended passage, said: 'Mr. McDonough, can you tell me why those lines are omitted from the acting play? There is nothing I have read in Shakespeare, certainly nothing in "Henry VI." or the "Merry Wives of Windsor," that surpasses its wit and humor.' The actor suggested the breadth of its humor as the only reason he could assign for its omission, but thoughtfully added that it was possible that if the lines were spoken they would require the rendition of another or other passages which might be objectionable.

"Your last suggestion,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'carries with it greater weight than anything Mr. Hackett suggested, but the first is no reason at all;' and after reading another passage, he said, 'This is not withheld, and where it passes current there can be no reason for withholding the other.'

And, as if

MONUMENT AT KELLOGG'S GROVE.

On June 24, 1832, Black Hawk attacked Apple River Fort, fourteen miles east of Galena, Illinois, but was unable to drive out the inmates. The next day he attacked a spy battalion of one hundred and fifty men at Kellogg's Grove, sixteen miles farther east. A detachment of volunteers relieved the battalion, and drove off the savages, about fifteen of whom were killed. The whites lost five men, who were buried at various points in the grove. During the summer of 1886 the remains of these men were collected and, with those of five or six other victims of the war, were placed together under the monument here represented. See "The Black Hawk War," by Reuben G. Thwaites, Vol. XII. in Wisconsin Historical Collections. This account of the Black Hawk War is the most trustworthy, complete, and interesting that has been made.

feeling the impropriety
of preferring the player
to the parson [there was
a clergyman in the room],
he turned to the chaplain
and said: 'From your
calling it is probable that
you do not know that the
acting plays which peo-
ple crowd to hear are not
always those planned by
their reputed authors.
Thus, take the stage edi-
tion of "Richard III."
It opens with a passage
from "Henry VI.," after
which come portions of
"Richard III.,"
" then
another scene from
"Henry VI.;" and the
finest soliloquy in the
play, if we may judge
from the many quota-
tions it furnishes, and
the frequency with which
it is heard in amateur
exhibitions, was never
seen by Shakespeare, but
was written was it not,
Mr. McDonough ?-after
his death, by Colley Cib-
ber.'

"Having disposed, for the present, of questions relating to the stage editions of the plays, he recurred to his standard copy, and read, or repeated from memory, extracts from several of the plays, some of which embraced a number of lines. He interspersed his remarks with extracts striking from their similarity to, or contrast with, something of Shakespeare's, from Byron, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and other English poets."*

After a steel engraving in the Governor's office, Springfield, Illinois. John Reynolds, Governor of Illinois from 1831 to 1834, was born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, February 26, 1788. He was of Irish parentage. When he was six months old his parents moved to Tennessee. In 1800 they removed to Illinois. When twenty years old, John Reynolds went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to college, where he spent two years. He was admitted to the bar at Kaskaskia in 1812. In the war of 1812 he rendered distinguished service, earning the title of "the Old Ranger." He began the practice of law in the spring of 1814. In 1818 he was made an associate justice of the Supreme Court; in 1826 he was elected a member of the legislature; and in 1830, after a stirring campaign, he was chosen Governor of Illinois. The most important event of his administration was the Black Hawk War. He was prompt in calling out the militia to subdue the Black Hawk, and went upon the field in person. In November, 1834, just before the close of his term as Governor, he resigned to become a member of Congress. In 1837, aided by others, he built the first railroad in the State-a short line of six miles from his coal mine in the Mississippi bluff to the bank of the river opposite St. Louis. It was operated by horse-power. He again became a member of the legislature in 1846 and 1852, during the latter term being Speaker of the House. In 1860, in his seventy-third year, he was an anti-Douglas delegate to the Charleston convention, and received the most distinguished attentions from the Southern delegates. After the October elections, when it became apparent that Lincoln would be elected, he issued an address advising the support of Douglas. His sympathies were with the South, though in 1832 he strongly supported President Jackson in the suppression of the South Carolina nullifiers. He died in Belleville in May, 1865. Governor Reynolds was a quaint and forceful character. He was a man of some learning; but in conversation (and he talked much) he rarely rose above the odd Western vernacular of which he was so complete a master. He was the author of two books; one an autobiography, and the other "The Pioneer History of Illinois."

CHAPTER XIV.

BERRY AND LINCOLN TAKE OUT A TAVERN LICENSE AND HIRE A CLERK.-LINCOLN BEGINS TO STUDY LAW.

T was not only Burns and Shakespeare that interfered with the grocery-keeping; Lincoln had begun seriously to read law. His first acquaintance with the subject had been made when he was a mere lad in Indiana and a copy of the "Revised Statutes of Indiana" had fallen into his hands. The very copy he used is still in existence, and, fortunately, in hands where it is safe. The book was owned by Mr. David Turnham of Gentryville, and was given in 1865 by him to Mr. Herndon, who placed it in the Lincoln Memorial collection of Chicago. In December, 1894, this collection was sold in Philadelphia, and the "Statutes of Indiana" was bought by Mr. William Hoffman Winters, Librarian of the New York Law Institute, and through his courtesy I have been allowed to examine it. The book is worn, the title page is gone, and a few leaves from the end are missing. The title page of a duplicate volume which Mr. Winters kindly showed me reads: "The Revised Laws of Indiana, adopted and enacted by the General Assembly at their eighth session. To which are prefixed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Indiana, and sundry other documents connected with the Political History of the Territory and State of Indiana. Arranged and published by authority of the General Assembly. Corydon: Printed by Carpenter and Douglass, 1824."

We know from Dennis Hanks, from Mr. Turnham, to whom the book belonged, and from other associates of Lincoln's at the time, that he read the book intently and discussed its contents intelligently. It was a remarkable volume for a thoughtful lad whose mind had been fired already by the history of Washington; for it opened with that wonderful document, the Declaration of Independence, a document which became, as Mr. John G. Nicolay says, "his political chart and inspiration." Following the Declaration of Independence was the Constitution of the

66

LINCOLN'S FIRST LAW-BOOK.

167

United States, the Act of Virginia passed in 1783 by which the · Territory North Westward of the river Ohio" was conveyed to the United States, and the Ordinance of 1787 for governing this territory, containing that clause on which Lincoln in the future based many an argument on the slavery question. This article, No. 6 of the Ordinance, reads: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: provided always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labour or service, as aforesaid.”

Following this was the Constitution and the Revised Laws of Indiana, three hundred and seventy-five pages, of five hundred words each, of statutes-enough law, if thoroughly digested, to make a respectable lawyer. When Lincoln finished this book, as he had, probably, before he was eighteen, we have reason to believe that he understood the principles on which the nation was founded, how the State of Indiana came into being, and how it was governed. His understanding of the subject was clear and practical, and he applied it in his reading, thinking, and discussion.

It was after he had read the Laws of Indiana that Lincoln had free access to the library of his admirer, Judge John Pitcher of Rockport, Indiana, where, undoubtedly, he examined many law-books. But from the time he left Indiana in 1830 he had no legal reading until one day soon after the grocery was started, when there happened one of those trivial incidents which so often turn the current of a life. It is best told in Lincoln's own words.* "One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but

*This incident was told by Lincoln to Mr. A. J. Conant the artist, who in 1860 painted his portrait in Springfield. Mr. Conant, in order to catch Mr. Lincoln's animated expression, had engaged him in conversation, and had questioned him about his early life; and it was in the course of their conversation that this incident came out. It is to be found in a delightful and suggestive article entitled, "My Acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln,” contributed by Mr. Conant to the "Liber Scriptorum," and by his permission quoted here.