The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln

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.