The tender heart of President Lincoln was often hurt when the news of a battle came to Washington with its list of killed and wounded. He tried to keep up his own spirits and the heart of the nation by his constant flow of stories which made the people smile through their tears. To him it was an awful thing for his brothers in the north to be fighting and slaying their brothers down south. When Abraham Lincoln saw that the time was right, he gave out the Emancipation Proclamation--his order to free four million slaves. He now had “a chance to hit that thing,” and he did “hit it hard.” Grand as it was to write that great paper and free all the slaves, it was even greater to show the people of the United States and of the whole world how to look on the bright side of the hardest trials, and even to laugh in the face of trouble. President Lincoln had the supreme joy of seeing the purpose of the war accomplished. His Gettysburg Address--which every boy and girl should know by heart--and the words from the Second Inaugural, “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” are ever-living witnesses of the kind heart and unselfish spirit of Abraham Lincoln. William Cullen Bryant, one of the first of American poets, wrote these lines for the Martyr President’s funeral: “O, slow to smite and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just! Who in the fear of God didst bear The sword of power, a nation’s trust. Pure was thy life; its bloody close Has placed thee with the Sons of Light, Among the noble hearts of those Who perished in the cause of Right.” ULYSSES S. GRANT, THE GENERAL WHO HATED WAR “This poor little boy has no name!” exclaimed Miss Simpson, the aunt who was visiting the Grant family at Point Pleasant, overlooking the Ohio River, about twenty miles east of Cincinnati. The rest of the family agreed that it would be a shame to let the baby go a day longer without a name. “Let’s name him now,” said the aunt; “let’s vote on it.” The others consented, and each wrote a preferred name on a bit of paper. Then a hat was passed and all put their [Illustration: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT.] slips in it. The aunt took out a ballot which read, “Ulysses.” This name was on several slips, because Grandfather Grant had just been reading the story of the siege of Troy. “Hiram” and “Albert” were on two other ballots. At last they decided to call the baby Hiram Ulysses Grant. When “Baby Lysses,” as the family called him, was about a year old, the Grants moved to Georgetown, a village about ten miles farther from Cincinnati, and ten miles back from the Ohio. Here little Ulysses grew and began to go to school, and some of the boys called him “Hug,” from his initials, H. U. G. Other boys, just to be funny, called him “Useless.”