is going to get there), that it won't take long to settle matters down. I think by next June I can surely come home for a good visit. I doubt, though, if we do have a place for Roy to take even then. All the places we have to give are rather--well, they are not in his line and the pay is small. The salary list looks pretty big to us on payday, but I reckon it looks slim enough to each one of the men who gets his little envelope. Now, I believe that is really all I overlooked replying to in your last; only, once more, father, _do_ vote for Lincoln and _don't_ throw yourself away on that tinkling little Bell. His chances are hopeless; and if they were not, then the country's chances would be. Might as well just put little Margaret at the helm of a ship. No matter how hard she'd pull, or how sweetly she'd smile or how hard she'd coax, the ship would miss the firm grip needed to steer clear of the breakers. There _are_ breakers ahead I Lincoln is our only hope for an undivided country and the limitation, once and for all, of the extension of slavery--_sure sure_. Again, love to all, "Beverly. "N. B.--I don't often read my letters over, but if I hadn't read this one I shouldn't be so certain as I am now that if I were my own father and should receive this cock-sure piece of advice from my eldest hopeful, I'd--well, I'd tan him well, verbally. But since I have the good luck to be the eldest of the _very_ best and most considerate father in this wide world, I don't expect anything of the kind to happen to me; but if it does, I'll swallow it like a little man--and take my revenge (in a scorching editorial) on some other fellow's father who votes for Bell. "Meekly, "B." Mr. Davenport--as was his habit--read the letter aloud to the family, but he smiled anxiously at Roy's merry comments. "Beverly is in a bad place to be reckless with his English, just now. That editorial on Breakers Ahead seemed to me to go a good deal too far. I'm glad he says he will not fight if there should be a war--which God forbid." "I would, then!" remarked Roy. "I'd get up a company right here in college. Lots of the boys declare they'd go." Mr. Davenport looked at his son over his gold-bowed glasses. There was a suspicious twinkle in his eyes and a twitching of the lips. There was a long pause before he spoke. This son of his had always seemed to Griffith younger than he was. "How old are you, Roy?" he asked in a spirit of fun. "You'd make a tremendous soldier, now, wouldn't you?--just out of short clothes?" "I'm older than Bev. was when he left college. I'm twenty. Young men make the best soldiers anyhow. I heard Governor Morton tell you that the last time he was here, and besides----" "Tut, tut, tut, boy, you attend to your lessons! Twenty! Is that so, Katherine? Is Roy twenty?"