In the early times in Illinois, those having hogs, did their own killing, assisted by their neighbors. Stripped of its hair, one held the carcass nearly perpendicular in the air, head down, while others put one point of the gambrel-bar through a slit in its hock, then over the string-pole, and the other point through the other hock, and so swung the animal clear of the ground. While all this was being done, it took a good man to “hold the hog,” greasy, warmly moist, and weighing some two hundred pounds. And often those with the gambrel prolonged the strain, being provokingly slow, in hopes to make the holder drop his burden. This latter thought is again expressed where President Lincoln, writing of the peace which he hoped would “come soon, to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time,” added that while there would “be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation,” he feared there would “be some white ones unable to forget that, with malignant heart and deceitful tongue, they had striven to hinder it.” He had two seemingly opposite elements little understood by strangers, and which those in more intimate relations with him find difficult to explain; an open, boyish tongue when in a happy mood, and with this a reserve of power, a force of thought that impressed itself without words on observers in his presence. With the cares of the nation on his mind, he became more meditative, and lost much of his lively ways remembered “back in Illinois.” HIS POOR RELATIONS. One of the most beautiful traits of Mr. Lincoln’s character was his considerate regard for the poor and obscure relatives he had left, plodding along in their humble ways of life. Wherever upon his circuit he found them, he always went to their dwellings, ate with them, and, when convenient, made their houses his home. He never assumed in their presence the slightest superiority to them. He gave them money when they needed it and he had it. Countless times he was known to leave his companions at the village hotel, after a hard day’s work in the court-room, and spend the evening with these old friends and companions of his humbler days. On one occasion, when urged not to go, he replied, “Why, Aunt’s heart would be broken if I should leave town without calling upon her;” yet, he was obliged to walk several miles to make the call. DESERTER’S SINS WASHED OUT IN BLOOD. This was the reply made by Lincoln to an application for the pardon of a soldier who had shown himself brave in war, had been severely wounded, but afterward deserted: “Did you say he was once badly wounded? “Then, as the Scriptures say that in the shedding of blood is the remission of sins, I guess we’ll have to let him off this time.” SURE CURE FOR BOILS. President Lincoln and Postmaster-General Blair were talking of the war.