between the Mississippi River and his brothers'
plantation, he encountered a company of Illinois
volunteers who were moving south to take a part in
what is commonly known as the "Black Hawk
War." They were led by a tall, awkward, un-
couth lad, whose appearance particularly attracted
Mr. Bryant's attention, and whose conversation de.
lighted him by its breeziness and originality. He
learned many years afterwards, from one who had
belonged to the troop, that this captain of theirs
was named Abraham Lincoln. ¹ Mr. Bryant little
dreamed as he scanned the ungainly stripling and
listened to his unweeded jokes that, some thirty
years later, it would become his duty to present
him to a New York audience and his privilege to
hear from these very lips "the decisive word of
the contest" which was to result in making this
captain of volunteers, for eight consecutive years,
President of the Republic; the central figure of
one of the most momentous wars that has ever yet
been waged among men, and the signer of the proc-
lamation that delivered over four millions of peo-
ple from slavery.

It was during this visit to his brothers that he
wrote of

"The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful
For which the speech of England had no name,"

the closing lines of which, though found in every
"Reader" used in American schools, never stales,

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