“William,” Ma says, “you know well enough you couldn’t have done nuthin’ else. I don’t understand these things none too well. ’Tain’t a woman’s business; but you done what you thought was right and you ain’t no call to worry about doin’ what you think is right.” That’s the way Ma always talks. You ought to know Ma. Still there ain’t no use denyin’ it. I don’t ever think about the last time I seen Little Dug without feelin’ bad. I never could be hard on him like some was for that Kansas-Nebraska bill. You see, fact was he thought he was doin’ a fine thing when he got up that bill. He seen the South wa’n’t satisfied, and he thought he’d fix up something to please ’em and keep ’em still a while--a kind of Daniel Webster he was tryin’ to be, makin’ a new compromise. Douglas got so busy tryin’ to please the South he clean lost sight of what the people was thinkin’ back home. I reckon he wan’t countin’ on us thinkin’ at all--just took it for granted we’d believe what he told us, like we’d always done. Surprisin’ how long you can fool people with the talk they was brought up on. Seems sometimes as if they hated to break in a new set of idees as bad as they do new boots. I reckon that was what Douglas was countin’ on back there in ’58. But he got it wrong that time. He hadn’t reckoned on what Abraham Lincoln had been doin’. Before he got through them debates, Douglas suspected it in my judgment. He knew that even if he did git to the Senate, Lincoln was the one that had come out ahead. Queer how every day after that election, it showed up more and more that Lincoln was ahead. Seemed sometimes that as if everybody in the whole North was bent on hearin’ him speak. Why, they sent for him to come to New York and Boston, and all the big men East got to writin’ to him, and the first thing I knowed the boys was talkin’ about his bein’ President. Well, I thought that was goin’ a leetle far. Just as I told you t’other day, it seemed to me almost as if somebody was pokin’ fun at him. He didn’t seem to me to look like a President. Queer how long it takes a man to find out that there ain’t anything in the world so important as honest thinkin’ and actin’, and that when you’ve found a man that never lets up ’til he sees clear and right, and then hangs on to what he sees like a dog to a root, you can’t make a mistake in tyin’ to him. You can trust him anywhere. Queer how long we are all taken in by high-soundin’ talk and fashionable ways and fine promises. But don’t you make no mistake, they ain’t no show in the long run with honest thinkin’. FATHER ABRAHAM Kind-hearted? Mr. Lincoln _kind-hearted_?