Lincoln's Hand

With the winter Bayard Taylor came on from his home in Kennett and toolc an apartment in East Twelfth street, and once a week Mrs. Taylor and he received all their friends there, with a simple and charming hospitality. There was another house which was much resorted to- the house of James Lommer Graham, afterward Consul-General at Florence, where he died. I had made his acquaintance at Venice three years before, and I came in for my share of that love for literary men whioh all their perversities could not extinguish in him. It was a veritable passion, which I used to think he could not have feit if he had boen a literary man Mmself. There were delightful dinners at his house, where the wit of the Stoddards shone, and Taylor beamed with. good-fellowship overflowed with invention; and Huntington, long Paris oorrespondent of the Tribune, humorDusly tried to talk himself into the resolution of spending the rest of his life in his own country. There was one evening when C. P. Craneh, always of a most pensive presence and aspect, sang the most killingly comic songs; and there was another evening when, after we all went into the library, something tragi:al happened. Edwin Boofch was one of aur number, a gentle, rather silent person in company, or with at least littlesocial initiative, who, as his fate would, went up to the cast of a auge band that lay upon one of the shelves. 'Whose hand is this, Lorry?" he asked our host, as he took it up and turned it over in both of his hands. Graham feigned not to hear, and Booth asked again, "Whose hand is this?" Then there was nothing for Graham but to say, "It's Lincoln's hand," and the raan for whom it meant such unspeakable things put it softly down without a tvord. When the children need Castor Oi! glve -them Laxol,- it is palatable.