When this news was brought to Lincoln, he reached for the Bible that always lay on his desk, and, turning to the first book of Samuel, the twenty-second chapter, read aloud, "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him; and he became a Captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men." The old saying, originating from the Bible, "To have friends you must show yourself friendly," was always true in Lincoln's case. One of these friends once said of Lincoln that "he had nothing, only friends." His enemies did not know him or they would not have been enemies. CHAPTER IX I. FALSEHOOD AIDS NO ONE'S TRUTH James Oppenheim says: "The greatest are the simplest-- They need be nothing else, It is the rest who have to play parts, To seem what they are not." War times and periods of great public agitation have always brought forth in every free country the most scurrilous and vicious denunciations and slanders of public men. Such vile vituperation of Washington, Lincoln and others in our stormy periods, if all printed would make many volumes that bear in numerous instances the logical appearance of authentic history. But when sifted down, each to its origin, it is always what some one, long since gone from the possibility of explanation, has said, or been supposed to say, who might have known or might have misunderstood. Every young man, if not every boy, sooner or later hears, as if indisputable, the most vulgar stories about men whom the world has enrolled as their noblest benefactors. All the moral world then seems to go to pieces as these stories seem to be the truth. But it is a common evidence of the viciousness, the most degenerate and cowardly viciousness, that is thus seen to remain possible in the composition of common minds. Political perversions of the meaning and motives of public men are so common in election times that the only wonder is, the only reassurance is, how little the disease of slander prevails, and yet, alas, we may not see how much injury and despair it has caused and is causing in growing minds. Many delight in making respected people appear filthy. Somehow, it satisfies and excuses their own brains and degenerate character.