"When John L. Scripps, then editor of the Chicago Press and Tribune, came down to Springfield to secure data for the authorized campaign life of the presidential candidate, Mr. Lincoln was more than ever brought face to face with the demands for the facts. Just how he met and disposed of the question the world will probably never know, for he locked himself up in a room with his biographer one afternoon and there communicated certain facts regarding his ancestry and early history which Scripps so long as he lived would never under any circumstance disclose."

This early life of Lincoln printed and circulated during the campaign of 1860, was soon forgotten by the public in general, but it forms the basis of all standard works on the life of Lincoln published since then.

Several years ago Mrs. B. F. Dyche of Evanston, secured a copy of the biography her father had written from John Hay, now Secretary of State in President Roosevelt's cabinet, and the work was reissued in permanent form and as a model of typographical art by the Cranbrook Press of Detroit, Mich.

MR. SCRIPPS' ESTIMATE OF LINCOLN.

A letter written by Mr. Scripps to Lincoln's law partner, Mr. Herndon, in which he welcomes the news that Mr. Herndon was about to write a book on Lincoln, shows how accurately he had guaged the future reputation of Lincoln. After modestly remarking that he might improve his own sketch if he had it to do again, he continued:

"It is gratifying, however, to see that the same qualities in Lincoln to which I then gave greatest prominence are those on which his fame ever chiefly rests. Is it not true that this is the leading lesson of Lincoln's life-that true and enduring greatness-the greatness that will survive the corrosion and abrasion of time, change and progress-must rest upon character? In certain showy and what are understood to be most desirable endowments, how many Americans have surpassed him! Yet how he looms above them now! Not eloquence, nor logic, nor power of command, nor courage-not any or all of these have made him what he is; but these, in the degree in which he possessed them, conjoined to those certain qualities comprised in the term character, have given him his fame, have made him for all time to come the great American man-the grand central figure in American (perhaps the world's) history."

This eloquent summing up of Lincoln's character is not only as true today as it was 35 years ago, but it will be far more universally accepted now than it was then.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE DRUG TRADE OF CHICAGO Compiled from the records of the Chicago Veteran Druggist's Association, by Albert E Ebert, Historian.

INTRODUCTORY.

It is proposed in these pages to outline the early history of the drug trade in Chicago from 1832 to 1871, inclusive. It was between these dates that the city laid the foundation of its greatness. and upon what was done then the superstructure has been reared. In the introductory pages it is our purpose to outline the geographical limits of the city, its relation to the surrounding country and to give such facts and data as will lead to a measurably clear understanding of the commercial conditions of the times, especially with relation to the subject directly under consideration. The early druggist is our subject. It is with him we shall have to deal, but we find him so alert and progressive a fellow, so interested in the affairs of the commonwealth of which he was a part, that to write his history it is necessary to write some of the history of other affairs as well. It was in the drug store of a pioneer that the first meeting was held, which resulted in the incorporation and organization of the village of Chicago. It is not generally known that Chicago was born in a drug store, but such is the fact. It may also be of interest to state that when the seal of the city of Chicago was adopted it was upon the suggestion of Dr. David Brainerd, a pioneer physician, that the little, fleecy cloud floating above the other figures was made the cradle of a naked, new-born babe. Thus it was that the future giant was ushered into the world, surrounded by all that loving care and skilled professional attention could bestow.

Until 1330 Chicago had but a mythical existence. The name was applied rather indiscriminately to the river and to the little settlement on its banks. Some say that the name signifies in the Indian dialect "great, mighty, powerful." and others find authority for the statement that the name comes from the Indian term "Chicagou," meaning wild onion or leek, from the fact that so many of these plants grew along the banks of the river. These two meanings may not be altogether irreconcilable.

In 1830 the little settlement began to take on the appearance of a town. The Illinois and Michigan canal had obtained its land grant a few years previously, and under the terms of their authority the canal commissioners began laying out towns on the canal lands. One of the first towns to be thus platted was Chicago. According to the

instructions of the commissioners, James Thompson, the canal surveyor, laid out the townsite, and a plat of it was published on the 4th of August, 1830. The first canal commissioners were Dr. Gershom Jayne, a druggist and physician of Springfield, Edmund Roberts of Kaskaskia and Charles Dunn. At this time there was but little order in the arrangement of the town.

The business district was largely confined to the south side of South Water street, the business houses facing the river, which pursued its clean, though somewhat sluggish, way toward the lake, met a sand bar near the present location of Rush street bridge and was deflected southward, entering the lake opposite the present terminus of Madison street. Those dwellings which were not on South Water street were sparsely scattered along Lake street and the intersecting north and south streets, such as Franklin, Wells, LaSalle, Clark and Dearborn streets. The north side of the river was virgin prairie save for the Kinzie homestead and a few isolated log cabins of other pioneers. The west side was in the same condition except for a little settlement opposite what was then known as Wolf's Point, between the forks of the river and across from the postoffice at the junction of Lake and South Water streets. The south side extended only to Madison street. In the Thompson plat of 1830 the north side is laid out as far north as Kinzie street, the west side as far west as the present location of Des Plaines street, the south side was bounded on the north and west by the river, on the east by what is now State street, east of and including which was Fort Dearborn reservation, and on the south by Madison street, but at the time neither State, Madison nor Des Plaines streets were named. The main portions of the town, therefore, so far as the business and residence parts were concerned did not go much farther east than Dearborn street, nor farther south than the south side of Washington street. Indeed, until later on in the thirties the size of the city was even less than the limits laid down in the original plat.

Business drifted from the west end of South Water street eastward to Dearborn street, from thence around upon Lake street, working up both sides to the junction of Lake, South Water and Market streets where it first began. During this time the intersecting streets got their share of the new stores which were started as the population of the city grew, the residence portions being forced gradually southward. At the beginning of the forties both Lake and South Water streets and those intersecting them were liberally sprinkled with stores, with here and there a dwelling house. During the period from 1830 to 1840 there were a good many inns and boarding houses to accommodate the transient population, and in the early days of that decade there were scattered dwellings on the cross streets with plenty of ground around them for the customary "garden patch."

Houses on South Water and Lake streets, if more than one story high, were often used as combination stores and dwellings after the fashion of the modern store and flat, but, without the modern conveniences. Those who lived outside the immediate vicinity of Lake and South Water streets usually had enough ground to do some