MR. LINCOLN'S FIRST DOLLAR.

In the president's chamber some men were conversing one evening, and the conversation running on that line Mr. Lincoln said: "Seward, you never heard, did you, how I earned my first dollar? I was about eighteen years old and we were quite poor. We had raised some produce and I got mother's consent to take it down the river on a flat boat and sell it. There were then no wharves on the river. I was down at the bank looking over my flat boat to see that it was all right before I started out. Two men came along and wanted to get out to a steamer in the river and asked me if I would take them and their trunks out. I said, 'Certainly.' So they got on the flat boat and I pulled them out to the steamer and they got aboard and I lifted on the trunks. The steamer was about to go and the men had forgotten to pay me, so I shouted to them and each of them threw a silver half dollar on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw the amount of the money. It may seem a small sum to you gentlemen, but it seemed an immense sum to me. To think that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day and by honest work, was almost too good to be true. But there it was and the world did not not seem such an awful big and terrible place after all, and I thought perhaps I could do great things yet, even if I was such a poor and helpless chap."