THE EVERY-DAY LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

A NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE
BIOGRAPHY WITH PEN-PICTURES
AND PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
BY THOSE WHO KNEW HIM

BY FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE

Compiler of "Golden Poems," "Bugle Echoes, Pose of
the Civil War," "Laurel-Crowned Verse," etc.

NEW AND THOROUGHLY REVISED EDITION, FROM NEW PLATES, WITH
AN ENTIRELY NEW PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN, FROM A
CHARCOAL STUDY BY J.K. MARBLE

CHICAGO
BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY
1913

FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE

1843-1913

The present revision of "The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln" was the last literary labor of its author. He had long wished to undertake the work, and had talked much of it for several years past. But favorable arrangements for the book's republication were not completed until about a year ago. Then, though by no means recovered from an attack of pneumonia late in the previous winter, he took up the task of revision and recasting with something of his old-time energy. It was a far heavier task than he had anticipated, but he gave it practically his undivided attention until within three or four weeks of his death. Only when the last pages of manuscript had been despatched to the printer did he yield to the overwhelming physical suffering that had been upon him for a long time past. His death occurred at Santa Barbara, California, on May 11.

Francis Fisher Browne was born at South Halifax, Vermont, on December 1, 1843. His parentage, on both sides, was of the purest New England stock. Early in his childhood, the family moved to Western Massachusetts, where the boy went to school and learned the printing trade in his father's newspaper office at Chicopee. As a lad of eighteen, he left the high school in answer to the government's call for volunteers, serving for a year with the 46th Massachusetts Regiment in North Carolina and with the Army of the Potomac. When the regiment was discharged, in 1863, he decided to take up the study of law. Removing to Rochester, N.Y., he entered a law office in that city; and a year or two later began a brief course in the law department of the University of Michigan. He was unable to continue in college, however, and returned to Rochester to follow his trade.

Immediately after his marriage, in 1867, he came to Chicago, with the definite intention of engaging in literary work. Here he became associated with "The Western Monthly," which, with the fuller establishment of his control, he rechristened "The Lakeside Monthly." The best writers throughout the West were gradually enlisted as contributors; and it was not long before the magazine was generally recognized as the most creditable and promising periodical west of the Atlantic seaboard. But along with this increasing prestige came a series of extraneous setbacks and calamities, culminating in a complete physical breakdown of its editor and owner, which made the magazine's suspension imperative.

FRANCIS F. BROWNE

The six years immediately following, from 1874 to 1880, were largely spent in a search for health. During part of this time, however, Mr. Browne acted as literary editor of "The Alliance," and as special editorial writer for some of the leading Chicago newspapers. But his mind was preoccupied with plans for a new periodical—this time a journal of literary criticism, modeled somewhat after such English publications as "The Athenæum" and "The Academy." In the furtherance of this bold conception he was able to interest the publishing firm of Jansen, McClurg