with more at heart than the study of elocution. Beneath the first stanzas of "The Burial of Sir John Moore,' Lincoln has written the rather curious comment:

If my Publick whom I have served, would lay me away like 'Sir John' I could rest in peace,

A. LINCOLN

The stanza of Burns which he wrote in his copy of Newman's Rhetoric Lincoln has again signalized in Kirkham's volume. Two pen strokes lead out from the last two lines,

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn,

to a note in Lincoln's own hand: 'and enslaves his fellow-man.'

Lincoln has so left his impress upon his fellow men that we should not willingly lose his most casual marginalia. But of no casual interest for these New Salem years are many entries in Kirkham's Elocution. Here, for example, are further lines which Mr. Kirkham quotes:

If that high world which lies beyond
Our own, surviving love endears;
If there the cherished heart be found,
The eye the same, except in tears;

How welcome those untrodden spheres!

How sweet this very hour to die!
To soar from earth, and find all fears

Lost in thy light . . . Eternity!

Beside these lines are the simple words "To Ann,' and the signature 'A. Lincoln.'

On the back flyleaf of the volume is an endorsement in the hand of Sally Calhoun:

ST. JOE MO. 1859.

This was the property of Mr. Lincoln, be left it with my Father on a visit to our home in Springfield Ill; I shall all ways cherish this book as it is so intimately marked in memory of his little sweetheart Ann. Mr. Lincoln recited many of these poems. SARAH CALHOUN.

The relations of Ann Rutledge, John McNeil, and Lincoln, and the brief courtship of Lincoln and Ann, so bright in its inception, so tragic in its conclusion, must be recounted in further papers. It will then be my privi lege to present to readers of the Atlantic the actual letters which passed be tween Lincoln and Ann - messages precious, unstudied, and movingand the opinions of those who knew and watched them as recorded in their diaries and recollections.

ON the seventh day of the seventh hoon there are no birds to be seen on arth. They have all gone into the eavens to make, with their wings in lose formation, a bridge across the olden River, a bridge on which big ister Kiao Miao goes reluctantly to er husband's home. And how bitterly he weeps! On earth her tears are alled rain. This is her story:

Ages and ages ago a poor young owherd, pasturing his buffaloes near lake, saw a wondrous sight. Ten elestial virgins, granddaughters of the Ieavenly Mandarin, came down to his ike to bathe. He could not keep the hatter to himself. He must confide 1 someone. So he told his favorite ld buffalo. His intelligent friend intructed him in this wise:

'Next time they come down you let ine of them put on their clothes and eturn to the sky. But you hide the arments of the tenth and take her ome to be your wife.'

Day after day she begged him tearfully, 'Tell me where to find my clothes.' 'Stop crying. I won't tell. You'll leave me if you have those clothes.'

Her ceaseless lamentation was trying to the patience of even a cowherd. He thought, 'By this time the clothing is ruined anyway, and besides, she would hardly be willing to leave her children. I'll tell her where to find her old clothes to stop her crying.'

At the very first chance she pulled the bundle up out of the well, and tried on the garments of her maidenhood. Their power was not diminished. She was carried away into the heavens.

The husband was disconsolate. His old friend the buffalo said, 'When I die, preserve my skin, for with that you too can rise to heaven.'

The time soon came to put these words to the test. But the man would not leave his children behind. He put each one into a basket and suspended these baskets from either end of a carrying pole. With the pole over one shoulder and the buffalo hide and a

o his part.

Again the damsels came to bathe. The nine put on their beautiful clothng and flew aloft. The tenth searched 1 vain for hers. Without it her feet vere earth-bound.

The cowherd took the unwilling but elpless maiden to his home, where she ived the life of an earthly wife and nother. Her first child was a boy, the econd a girl.

She hunted continually for the ceestial robes, without which she could ot rise above earth. Her husband had idden them down in a well.

skies in search of his runaway wife.

She saw him coming. Even the sight of her children did not reconcile her to the prospect. Quickly she took a golden hairpin from her head, and with it drew a line across the heavens to keep the man at a distance. This is the Heavenly River flowing at her feet. With such a poetic and appropriate name, who would call it the 'Cow's Milk Road'?

The wife further manifested her displeasure. She threw the spindle with which she had been weaving. Her aim was not good, and it fell some distance

from her husband's feet. In retaliation he threw at her the buffalo yoke. His marksmanship was better. He almost hit his angelic wife.

There, in the seventh moon, you can see on the east side of the Milky Way, almost within the river, three bright stars in a row. The brightest one is in the centre, and that is the father. The fainter ones on either side are the children. Not far away is the diamondshaped constellation popularly known as Job's Coffin. That is the spindle.

Just across from where the father stands is one bright star, his wife, and the three stars of the triangular yoke, fainter, as befits their earthly origin.

The wife was powerless to escape her fate. In duty bound, she must spend part of each year in her husband's home. The magpie was used as a messenger to carry the demands of the one and the answers of the other across the river. The wife consented to give her husband twelve days each year, spending the rest of the time on her own side.

The bird, perhaps malignantly, perhaps ignorantly, changed the message and promised that she would spend all but twelve days with her husband.

In anger at such perfidy, this granddaughter of the Heavenly Mandarin snatched the bird bald, and to this day, in the seventh moon, the magpie has no feathers on the top of his head.

But this act of vengeance did not relieve her from fulfilling the contract.

In the copious summer rains people say, 'Big sister Kiao Miao is crying. She mourns for her home on the other side of the Heavenly River.'

For several years past the summer rains have been scant. They say, 'Big sister is getting old. She no longer weeps as once she did.'

But this year, on the seventh day of the seventh moon, she crossed to her husband in a veritable tantrum of rage - thunder, lightning, wind, and hail.

ALL that I am to-day I owe to the magazines. Once upon a time I used to buy them from the news stands erclusively. And then somebody gave me a subscription to the Era. It was the turning point in my life. No, I don't mean intellectually. I had always been a reasonably active reader. I'm talking about material things, plain dollars and cents. Until then I had been able to earn money-after a fashion. But I had never been able to accumulate it. I had, alas, never realized the truth of that splendid old prov erb, 'A penny saved is a penny earned.' Shortly afterward or so it seemed -I received the following message printed on a green slip and inserted in my copy of the Era: 'Your subscription expires with the next issue, and we are, accordingly, giving you an opportunity to take advantage of our Special Offer which holds good only until February 15. A year's subscrip tion to the Era costs $4.00. McClen nan's, taken alone, is $3.50. Fill out this blank, enclose your check for $5.50, and we will send you both maga zines for one year.' I calculated rapidly: $7.50 minus $5.50 equals $2.00; $2.00 on a $5.50 sinking fund is 36 per cent. Was I a man to give the cold shoulder to a 36 per cent investment? I sent them my check.

Not long afterward I received a square, spotlessly white envelope ad dressed in faultless Spencerian handwriting to 'Parke Cummings, Esq.'the italics, of course, being mine.

'Aha,' I mused. 'Here is that longawaited invitation to the Halloways dance. It almost looked as though they were going to forget me.' Eagerly I tore open the envelope. Inside, sure enough, was an engraved invitationto take advantage of the Woman's House Builder's kind offer to send

e, free of charge, one dozen handɔmely initialed handkerchiefs as a light token of appreciation for my subcription ($3.00) to the Woman's House Builder. I accepted - with pleasure. nd anyhow I learned later on from friend that the Halloways' dance as a washout.

This stroke of fortune I followed up with a few more investments. It was hen that I happened to encounter en on the street. Len is a Wall Street nan, and naturally our talk drifted on o finance.

"Have you anything good up your leeve?' I asked him with studied onchalance.

His eyes sparkled. 'Have I!' he eplied enthusiastically. Five hunIred shares of Consolidated Lightning Arrester at 112! That's all! Can ou beat it — with an almost certain nerger with U. S. Oscillating Transormers? Man, it's a gold mine! And how about you?'

I,' I began calmly, 'have two years of the World Explorer, 1929, 14 per ent, three years of New PsychologySouth American Humor combined, 21 per cent with quarterly Gillette Razor 3lade dividends, five years of Horses ind Huntsmen, a set of O. Henry naturing in three years, and a lifetime subscription to the Pacific Quarterly which will net me a seven-room bungaow with two baths by the time I am orty-five.'

I could see he was impressed and confused. He fumbled for words for a moment or so and finally sputtered, Well, I stand to clean up between seven and eight thousand. That is, provided-'

My possessions now are legion: Sets of Dumas, De Maupassant, Poe, the Five-Foot Shelf. Books by Plato, Darwin, Huxley, Wilde, Dreiser, Upton Sinclair. Reams of monogrammed stationery. Cocktail shakers. A tea set -which I presented to my mother. Castile soap. magic-lantern slide-I gave this to Cousin Richard. Radiator tops. Copies of the World's Best Pictures. Memberships in lecture courses. Smoking sets. Electric irons. A vacuum cleaner. Booklets on How to Build Ship Models, How to Sprint, The Voter's Duty, The Truth about Sacco and Vanzetti, The Truth about Nicaragua, The Truth about Psychiatry, Do the People Want Democracy? These and a thousand other things.

Tennis trousers. A

And besides all this my books to date show a profit of $684.50 saved by taking advantage of offers in time. Only once did I act too slowly. This was when I replied in November to an offer which expired the preceding January. I was informed that the magazine in question would gladly have complied with my request but for the fact that its publication had been permanently suspended.

But you say these six hundred odd dollars are only paper profits? True, but what a trivial objection! The whole point is in my change of habits,

From then on success became positively monotonous. I began to receive checks. Not real checks, of course, but enticing green, blue, and yellow slips

a drifter, a wanton spender, a hand-tomouther. I have now gone far in the world. And, mark my words, I shall go farther for I have learned the Secret of Thrift.