* * * * * NOTE.--This reproduction is from the last photograph Mr. Beecher ever had taken. It was made by Elliot & Fry in London, September, 1886. As he started to leave the gallery, he said to me: “Now, sir, I am ready to be led to the next block for slaughter.” He was looking me squarely in the eye as he spoke. The photographer said: “Stand right where you are, just a moment, Mr. Beecher.” He shifted his apparatus and caught this picture. J. B. POND. * * * * * “After the war, for the first time in my life it seemed to me that it was possible for me to visit the Southern portion of my native land. There had always been a sting in the thought that I, a citizen of the United States, who if need be would lay down his life for his country, could not cross Mason and Dixon’s line with any certainty of coming back, and that my name was a name to conjure with and bring up evil spirits. It had always hurt my pride of patriotism that I, a loyal and freedom-loving man, could not go where I pleased on this continent, that I could not go into any of thirteen or fourteen of these United States. I had feared that I should die without the sight. “I did not know how the change was to be brought about, but I believed that there would be emancipation; that the conscience of mankind would slowly unfold and work in secret ways toward liberty, and that in the remote future free labor, applied to the raising of cotton and sugar, would compete in the market with slave labor and lead to abolition. That was my theory; but the Lord cut it short in righteousness; He severed the Gordian knot with the sword; this country was made free from end to end; and ever since I have said within myself, ‘Before I die I hope to tread the soil of every State in this Union.’ And now I have actually been away down South.