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too is the chivalrous, pathetic, ridiculous, Knight of La Mancha, whose thin tall shadow still seems to point with heroic menace at every foe of his great dreams and with them another and a humbler figure, stricken in years, but with the heart of a child, “ Uncle Remus," the teller of tales. Whether they are of history or of romance, those three, it is hard to tell; but there can be no doubt of this fourth figure that is with them. He is, indeed, as strangely romantic as any but his title to humanity is beyond question.

A man without vices, even in his youth, but full even in ripe age of the sap of virility-the sweet and the stern experiences of life changed him in many ways with the long years, but left him still unlike all others, left him still accessible to all, spontaneously responsive. Happy the nation which in its great need, dared to trust to such a man its fortunes!

I referred at the beginning of this volume to the fascination of Lincoln's personality. That fascination arises, as I think, from a sort of contradiction or parodox of which one is always sensible whenever one touches it. It often reminds one of Dickens, in whom, to quote his latest biographer, uncommon sensibility was mixed with common sense. But Lincoln's is not only one of those tragi-comic characters which are in themselves so rich in human suggestion: it is besides that of a logician who was never able to divorce his reasoning faculty from his humanity. In a word he was a man in whom the contradictions of lesser types were reconciled but not wholly obliterated. And it is the men who have, as it were, stretched our human nature to include in their one personality elements we have by common

consent regarded hitherto as incompatible, that attract and hold our attention. It is not merely that Lincoln, born in a log cabin became the autocrat of the White House; such a story was not unprecedented in America, it is a recurring romance all through history; it is not even that the uncrowned ruler of a continent whose eyes beheld as in a mystical vision the Union of its States, should finish a conversation sitting nonchalantly on some door-step in his capital, or should turn immediately from the crackling pages of a secondrate humorist to that which he regarded as the most sacred and solemn act of his life: it is not these striking but superficial anomalies which hold us, as we consider the man, but something always more subtle, essential and inexplicable. He had imbibed the spirit of action, had lived in its atmosphere all his days, and yet stood always as it were a step or two aloof from it. He always loafed a little, even in the press of affairs, not only that he might reason with himself about causes and results, but often that he might recall a story illustrating some aspect of events, which seemed to others trivial or irrelevant. Almost diffuse in his emotionality, he was perhaps the most cautious man of his time. Nearly always pleasant and ready to converse, without the appearance of secretiveness, and often saying "helplessly natural and naïve things," as astute critics observed; there was yet none of his critics nor even of his intimates who fathomed the President's reserve, which was deeper than a well.

The story of his life is one of great difficulties greatly overcome, yet the fact which remains most impressive of all perhaps, is the unobtrusiveness, the

docility, of a personality so complex and powerful. His earlier story is marred by the struggles of a sensitive nature against coarser ones, with outbreaks of occasional brutality overwhelmed in subsequent shame. He was hungry for love, but was proud and self absorbed. Till he met Speed, he had hardly known a real companion. His very ability was constantly bringing him into social conditions more and more unbearable to an unconventional and spontaneous genius, born and nourished on the frontier. The provincial society of the Edwards group at Springfield stifled and confused him. But his destiny urged him on. He was hardly to know personal happiness, or any full measure of understanding. Thus there were all the conditions present for the production of an obtrusive, irritable, aggressive personality, capricious, moody and tyrannous. these qualities were ever noticeable in Lincoln, they only served to remind the more acute observer how well he had learned the first lesson of political economy, to know and rule himself. But to most observers, they had become invisible. He had integrated a complex and contradictory nature by devotion to duty; and that devotion led him on from conquest to conquest, till untried, unmeasured forces became the man's auxiliars. Thus he stands up before us all, erect but stooping a little, rapt in thought, with kind, sad, strong, inscrutable face.

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APPENDICES

Lincoln's Autobiography — Lincoln's Mother - Letter to Mrs O. H. Browning-Three contemporary descriptions of President Lincoln.

APPENDIX A

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES WRITTEN BY LINCOLN FOR J. W. FELL, DECEMBER 1859.

I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin county, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon county, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham county, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was labouring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks county, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer county, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher

beyond "readin', writin', and cipherin'" to the rule of three. If a straggler, supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighbourhood he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon county. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard county, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk war, and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran for the legislature the same year (1832) and was beaten-the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During this legislative period I had studied law and removed to Springfield to practise it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practised law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

If any personal description of me is thought desirable it may be said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected.

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