Although Moses knew nothing of it at the time, the day he bore the summons to the meeting at which the Proclamation that freed his race was read was the great day of his life. It is well for any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a great event in the world's history. "I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation," Uncle Moses used to say with ever-deepening pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old age, he came to think he really had carried the Proclamation to the Cabinet, instead of simply summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which the Proclamation was first read. Memory plays queer tricks with the old. So Unk' Mose's tale lost nothing in the telling, year after year. * * * * * The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a small party at the residence of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was there. He wrote that evening in his diary: "They all seemed to feel a sort of new and exhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's Proclamation had freed them as well as the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation of appropriating that horrible name." The Proclamation made it respectable to be an Abolitionist. Every great reform is disreputable until it succeeds. * * * * * The Proclamation seemed to have freed the President too. When a man has made a New Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in bondage--emancipation was to take place wherever the Stars-and-Stripes flew on January 1, 1863--such a man must have a wonderful glow of reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew gentler. Always with a keen eye for humorous absurdity, he grew still more fond of it. Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the President's office. Lincoln was stretched out at full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long legs on the sill of the open window. He was holding a seven-foot telescope to his eyes, its other end resting upon his toes. He was looking at two steamboats puffing hard up the Potomac. What news did they bring? As the boy knocked, the President, without turning his head, called out: "Come in, Tommy." Tom opened the door and as he did so John Hay pushed excitedly by him, a telegram in his hand, saying: "Mr. President, what do you think Smith of Illinois has done? He is behaving very badly." "Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of meanness, but I'm too busy to quarrel with him. Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll never hear of it." He knew how to disregard little men and their little deeds.