LITTLE BIOGRAPAIES.—

Richard M. Johnston, who has published a valua-
ble biography of Mr. Stephens:

My time was occupied almost constantly on week-days in
reading, studying and office business. Inever lounged about
with village crowds.

At twenty-four, he was elected to the State Leg-
islature. Here he spoke rarely; but whenever he
did he commanded attention by his eloquence and
by his knowledge of his subject. The next year
he was prostrated by illness — consumption was
feared. However, he rallied, and five years later,

e was elected to the State Senate,
Meanwhile he was sending his half-brother,

 

ALEXANDER YU. STEPHENS.

Linton, through college, loving him almost with a
mother’s tenderness, and writing most frequently.
He tells him:

No day passes but you are in my mind, and you do not
escape from my dreams by night.

And then he gives wise counsel :

Always look up; think of nothing but objects of the high-
est ambition which can be compassed by energy, virtue, and
strict morality. Inall things do nothing on which you could

_ not invoke the divine blessing. Never condescend to notice
small offenses. Be above them.

HOW SUCCESS IS Woun. 30f

Again he writes him:

To be a scholar requires energy, resolution, time, self
denial, patience and ambition. He that possesses them can,
control not only his own destiny, but that of others.

Alexander Stephens had now reached the age of
thirty-one. His college debts were paid and he
was helping others as he had been helped. Per-
suasive in speech, profound in argument, Georgia
had sent him to the Congress of the United States.
He had no money to buy votes, no influential
friends to help, but his genius and his moral char-.
acter, winning the people, won the position. He
could now turn back to his journal where he wrote.
years before, “ My soul-is bent upon success,” and
write after it, ‘‘ I have succeeded.”

In Congress, Mr. Stephens took fearless posi-
tions upon all great questions. At one time he
incurred the displeasure of several Southern poli-
ticians by opposing the acquisition of California and
New Mexico, and Judge Cone called him a traitor.
Mr. Stephens was aroused, and threatened “to.
slap his face.’ Demanding a retraction of the
threat, Cone met him on a hotel piazza, threw the
man scarcely half his size to the floor, and thrust
a dirk knife eighteen times into his body, one gash
coming within the sixteenth of an inch of his heart.
Once, as the knife was aimed at his throat, Mr.
Stephens grasped it in his hand, which was literally
cut to pieces. He recovered, against the expecta-.
tions of everybody, and years after, looking at his.
withered hand, said, “‘ Poor Cone! I’m sure he’d
be sorry if he knew what trouble I have to write
with these stiff fingers of mine.”

For sixteen years, much of the time a great suf-
ferer, Mr. Stephens continued his honorable and
brilliant record in Congress. Meantime the ques-
tion of Slavery had become an all-important issue..
Naturally believing that slavery was legal and
righteous, from his life-long education and habits,
he yet fought earnestly against the secession of any
State from the Union. However, when Georgia
would follow the example of South Carolina, he
felt it his duty to stand by the State which had so.
long honored him with important trusts. He was,
made Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy,
yet so anxious was he that a reconciliation should
be brought about, that he, with two other Southern
men, met President Lincoln and Secretary Seward
at Hampton Roads in 1865, for a conference; but
no terms could be agreed upon. At the downfall
of the Confederacy, when urged to go abroad
rather than be imprisoned and perhaps executed,
he replied, “I would rather die in this country
than live in any other. I will remain and accept
whatever fate has in store for me.”

He was soon after taken, a prisoner, to Fort
Warren, Boston, where he remained some months,
treated, however, with kindness and respect; for