[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1854--HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
From a photograph owned by Mr. George Schneider of Chicago,
Illinois, former editor of the "Staats Zeitung," the most influential
anti-slavery German newspaper of the West. Mr. Schneider first met Mr.
Lincoln in 1853, in Springfield. "He was already a man necessary to
know," says Mr. Schneider. In 1854 Mr. Lincoln was in Chicago, and
Mr. Isaac N. Arnold, a prominent lawyer and politician of Illinois,
invited Mr. Schneider to dine with Mr. Lincoln. After dinner, as
the gentlemen were going down town, they stopped at an itinerant
photograph gallery, and Mr. Lincoln had the above picture taken for
Mr. Schneider. The newspaper he holds in his hands is the "Press and
Tribune." The picture has never before been reproduced.]
[Illustration: LINCOLN IN FEBRUARY, 1860, AT THE TIME OF THE COOPER
INSTITUTE SPEECH.
From a photograph by Brady. The debate with Douglas in 1858 had given
Lincoln a national reputation, and the following year he received many
invitations to lecture. One came from a young men's Republican club in
New York,--for one in a series of lectures designed for an audience of
men and women of the class apt to neglect ordinary political meetings.
Lincoln consented, and in February, 1860 (about three months before
his nomination for the Presidency), delivered what is known from the
hall in which it was delivered, as the "Cooper Institute speech"--a
speech which more than confirmed his reputation. While in New York he
was taken by the committee of entertainment to Brady's gallery, and
sat for the portrait reproduced above. It was a frequent remark with
Lincoln that this portrait and the Cooper Institute speech made him
President.]