“Then a few years ago in Frankfort twenty thousand people followed to the grave the bodies of the men who had fallen in Mexico.  The State has raised a monument to them, to the soldiers of 1812, to those who fought at the river Raisin.  The Legislature has ordered a medal to be struck in honor of a boy who had defended his ensign.  No man can make a public speech in Kentucky without mention of Encancion and Monterey, or of the long line of battles in which every generation of our people has fought.  This is the other proof that in times of peace we do not forget.  It is not much, but it is of the right kind—­it is the soldier’s monument, it is the soldier’s medal, it is the soldier’s funeral oration, it is the recognition by the people of its ideal of courage in times of peace.  And with every other brave people this proof passes as the sign universal.  But our homicides and our duels, nearly all of them brought about in the name—­even under the fear—­of courage, what effect have they had in giving us abroad our reputation as a community?  I ask myself the question, what if all the men who have killed their personal enemies or been killed by them in Kentucky, and if all the men who have killed their personal friends or been killed by them in Kentucky, had spent their love of fighting and their love of courage upon a monument to the Pioneers—­such a monument as stands nowhere else in the world, and might fitly stand in this State to commemorate the winning of the West?  Would the world think the better or the worse of the Kentucky ideal of bravery?

“I had not meant to talk to you so long on this subject,” I added, in apology, “but I have been thinking of these things lately since I have been so much in town.”

“I am interested,” said Georgiana; “but as I agree with you we need not both speak.”  But she looked pained, and I sought to give a happier turn to the conversation.

“There is only one duel I ever heard of that gave me any pleasure, and that one never came off.  A few years ago a Kentuckian wrote a political satire on an Irishman in Illinois—­wrote it as a widow.  The Irishman wished to fight.  The widow offered to marry the Irishman, if such a sacrifice would be accepted as satisfactory damages.  The Irishman sent a challenge, and the Kentuckian chose cavalry broadswords of the largest size.  He was a giant; he had the longest arms of any man in Illinois; he could have mowed Erin down at a stroke like a green milkweed; he had been trained in duelling with oak-trees.  You never heard of him:  his name is Abraham Lincoln.”

“I have heard of him, and I have seen him—­in Union County before I came here,” said Georgiana, with enthusiasm.

“He came here once to hear Mr. Clay speak,” I resumed; “and I saw them walking together one day under the trees at Ashland—­the two most remarkable-looking men that I ever beheld together or in human form.”

My few acres touch the many of the great statesman.  Georgiana and I often hear of the movements of his life, as two little boats in a quiet bay are tossed by the storms of the ocean.  Any reference to him always makes us thoughtful, and we fell silent now.