Semi=weekly graphic., 1897-04-21

i in 1859 Lincoln said 10 him bitterly, I expect every one to desert me HOW but Billy Herndon. " That Lincoln believed him worthy and frue is shown in more than one preferred appointment after he became president and in the eorresp9na- ence between the two, which not only overlows with cordiality, but betrays confidence and love as deep and abiding as those which exist or should exist, between brothers.
 I first met A1r Borndon in Spring field Ills. We were sitting in one of the dingy old rooms which he and Lln- coln had used fer q law office. There was but little il the furniture of the room or it's surroundings to suggest that within it's inclcsure these primitive law mariners had eyer explained the law to their clieEts, prepared their papers and charged up their fees, or that through the only deer lad passed outward the | figure of that tall, sad faced man whom fate had decreed should make his way unerringly to imperishable renown. We sat facing tho west, and cur feet rested on the sills of the old back Wlll' doWs through which Lincoln and thls same law partner had so often gazed as they sat there of quiet afternoons undis' turbed by business or the calls of clients and discussed the varied features of law. religion CT politics. Before and overhead wae the same sea of blue into which they pSsl@d, and below the same Dictnresdge back yard, with its profusion of Vornous boots and discarded tin cans. MT. Hcrndon, already the depesi- tary of a valuable collection of material pertaining U | ne In, had enlisted my sympathetic interest and assistance III the preparation of life Of his former partner which, il Carlyle's language, gboel& ell Gods naked truth, The pur- pose af first WAS q series of articles for a magazine newly established ill Ghlea- go, but these afttrWard expanded almost i insensibly into two rather pretehtious volumes 6f biography. \ great and ln many respects al unGied field lay be- l fore us. A 11aIe of the ferner biograph' CTS cf LiueCln had visited either Ken i lucky CT southern Indiana, l was dis patched thithor commissioned and de- 1 terminea ta beain all the facts.
 Just here ii i5 due the reader to state that roeL.ng wes 50 calealated to create and eITe impetus to tl myriad ct m necessary aad efspndlcss stories regard i ing BIf Lireala 3 origin as his slH8u- l llrlv rrtictnt sal cyasiye conduct when appealed to for particulars of his carly litaef thc details If his ancestry. He i 1aa dr.fttd down the Sangamen river
 nto central Illinois shortly after attain
 ing his majority, coming in from the south, but beyond that nobody in fhat region knew anything of his history. i When Jesse W Fell, the secretary of 1 the Republican state committee, who, in | suggested the propriety of q l sketch # his personal history for dis t1ibntion through Pennsylvania and eth CT adjacent states for the purpose 0f l awakening some interest in his presideu- tial possibilities, Lincoln treated the matter with apparent indifference.
 i "Thero is nothing i'll my early his i tory, he answered, '.to interest you or any one else, and besides, as Judge Da wis would say, it won't pay. At last, however, after q good deal of argument, Fell drew from him q brief autobio- graphical statement carefully worded,
 not dictated to another but all in his own handwriting. This mere sketch, which fails to state what his mothers i name was or whether his parents were ever married, was the only history or account of his life in existence when the convention chose him as the stand 1 ard bearer of his party in the spring of
 1860, After the nomination horde of newspaper men swooped down on him,
 notebooks in hand, to iot down what 1 the presidential candidate saw fit to tell them regarding his origin and family i history, but as each fellow in turn was referred to the Fell manuscript he went i away with a curious notion i'll his head
 that in that exceeding condensed state
 ment of biographical facts something had been adroitly withheld or for some peculiar reason left unsaid. On account Of the meager display of facts there could not help being a demand for some thing more specific At length BIr Lin. 1 SCAAAi 7 ANANt4AiS t1 tAit9 N1SilC3 tliCi3ditu another account Of his life, which his secretary, AIr Nicolay, copied and sent to friends in Chic, New York and else where but though somewhat longer it
 was hardly moro than a repetition of
 he Fell manuscript The one curious 1 thing about the whole matter was that l MT. Lincoln insisted on writing both
 these sketches himself. He dictated
 most Of his correspondence 10 be written 1 by his secretary, but either because he
 wanted to be mathematically exact or
 for some other reason which no one
 knows he prepared these productions
 with his own hand The whole thing, i viewed at this distance, seems 8 very strange proceeding for a presidential
 candidate
 An enthusiastic friend in Kentucky
 who, in the effort to locate ETr. Lin. coln's origin CT identify him with q cer.
 tain family, wrote asking him for the
 details Of bis maternal gencalogy was 1 sileneed by eart letter in reply. say.
 Ing. You .ae mistaken in regard to
 my mother, but nothing mere was
 said to indicate wherein the rn:e.ake ex-
 isted or how il might be corrected. It
 is not unnatural therefore that out of
 this maze of reluctancc, uncertainty and
 doubt a grcat many incredible and apoc-
 ryphal stories connected with Mr Lin
 coin carly history should have had
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