And when the last sweet sleep of all Shall smooth the wrinkles from thy brow, May God on high as gently guard Thy slumbering soul as I do now. This incident occurred in the summer of 1882. Eleven years after Colonel Lamon lay dying. He was conscious to the last moment, but for the last sixteen hours he had lost the power of speech. His daughter watched him for those sixteen hours, hoping every moment he would be able to speak. She was so stunned during this long watch that she could not utter a prayer to comfort her father's soul, but just before the end came, the last lines of the little poem came to her like an inspiration which she repeated aloud to her dying father: "And when the last sweet sleep of all Shall smooth the wrinkles from thy brow, May God on high as gently guard Thy slumbering soul as I do now." These were the last words Colonel Lamon ever heard on earth. He died at eleven o'clock on the night of May 7th, 1893; and many most interesting chapters of Lincoln's history have perished with him. [Illustration: Letter page 1] [Illustration: Letter page 2] RECOLLECTIONS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. CHAPTER I. EARLY ACQUAINTANCE. When Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency in 1860, a campaign book-maker asked him to give the prominent features of his life. He replied in the language of Gray's "Elegy," that his life presented nothing but "The short and simple annals of the poor." He had, however, a few months previously, written for his friend Jesse W. Fell the following:-- I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Harden County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, some others in Macon counties, Illinois--My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by indians,--not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest--His ancestors, who were quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania--An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite, than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like--