out of the office praying and weeping; and the old usher, touching her shawl, told her who had really saved her husband's life. "Madam," said he, "the baby did it." One of his generals once urgently remonstrated with him for rendering desertion safe, though it was seriously weakening the army. "Mr. General," said Mr. Lincoln, "there are already too many weeping widows in the United States. For God's sake don't ask me to add to the number, for I won't do it." Even to put a stop to the unutterable horrors which were slowly murdering our brave men in the rebel prisons, he could not retaliate. He said, "I can never, never starve men like that. Whatever others may say or do, I never can, and I never will, be accessory to such treatment of human beings." Once, after the massacre at Fort Pillow, he pledged himself in a public speech that there should be a retaliation. But that pledge he could not keep, and he did not. His perfectly sweet kindness of feeling was as inexhaustible towards the rebels as such, as towards dumb beasts, or the poor and unfortunate of his own loyal people, and it was shown as clearly in his state papers and speeches as in any private act or word. That sentiment, and one other--the unconditional determination to adhere to the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and to do his sworn official duty--colored the series of speeches which he made on his way to Washington. At Philadelphia, where he was especially impressed with associations about the old Independence Hall, he said, speaking of that edifice, and standing within the old Hall itself: "All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." Then he referred to the doctrine of freedom in that instrument; and he said: "But if this country can not be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated in this spot than surrender it. * * * I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by."