quell the anguish of breaking hearts. Correspondents accompanying the President's party tell of Lincoln's remarkable simplicity, his sad, fatherly bearing as he viewed the wreck and devastation of the beautiful old city, but most of all of the overflowing adoration of the Negroes who crowded about "Massa Linkum," shouting "Glory! Glory!" "Bress de Lord! Bress de Lord!"

Their Moses who had led them out of the wilderness was before them. The tropical exuberance of their joy knew no bounds. They were drunk with ecstasy. They leaped and ran for joy, like the lame man healed by the Nazarene, and with far more reason. They kissed one another, hugged their nearest fellow to their hearts, surging in groups about the tall, sad man contemplating them with a countenance of spiritual tenderness.

Charles Carleton Coffin tells of one old Negro wearing a few rags, "whose white, crisp hair appeared through his crownless straw hat," who lifted the hat, bared his head, kneeled upon the ground, clasped his hands and cried, "May de good Lord bress and keep you safe, Massa President Linkum." Mr. Lincoln lifted his own hat and bowed to the old man. The moisture gathered in his eyes. He brushed the tears away and the procession moved on.

With such scenes frequently occurring, the President concluded his visit. He had received the fullest measure of return for his life-long devotion to the liberty of man, the unmeasured blessings of those humble freemen. His work was done. A few days and the news of his assassination spread like a dark cloud over all the land. A world halted to lay tribute on his grave. The Captain of the Army of Human Rights had departed. The world was hushed and still.

Chapter XIX

LINCOLN A PRESENT POWER

H

UMANITY is ever bound to a mighty struggle for the preservation of those ideals it has won from its grosser passions through the action of its God-like attributes. History records nothing but the initial scenes and the culminating climaxes in this endless drama. It has its playful humors, its periods of peaceful advance, its brief hours of joy and bliss, its wars of passion and its sublime, if solemn, closes. The Seasons seem to have been instituted divinely for the instruction of man so that he may be kept to the task of bringing back from the Winter of destruction, the bloom of Spring, the Summer of development, and the Fall of fruitage. From its point of vantage above these phenomena of Nature, humanity may see its own struggle mirrored and take council of that Book of Life to persevere under all circumstances, confident that if Nature can redeem herself from seeming annual death and destruction, man, given not only superior powers of strength and resistance, but a rational ability to use his faculties in his own much higher field of the seasons of the mind, can also redeem himself.

But mankind, like nature in its physical aspects, needs and must have help and guidance from some Superior Intelligence to be led upon a higher way to greater usefulness and beauty. The rose has been glorified by the application of principles

to its primal nature, principles discovered and developed by man's powers of rational comparison and application of laws inherent in the constitution of the rose itself. This is as true in the animal as in the floral kingdom. In another direction man has applied the discovery of these principles so that he has captured and made his servants those higher and still little known so-called finer forces. Man stands on a middle ground, in close sympathy with the living forms of nature, from the molecule of animal life and the tiny seed in vegetable life, to the comrade that walks at his elbow and is cognizant of the feelings of himself and others. He is also on the borderland of the mysterious, dealing with those elements that constitute the hidden forces of the universe. The former he develops to higher forms of existence, the latter he lays hold of and harnesses to assist him in his endeavors to make a better and a more beautiful world.

Man has ideas, hopes and aspirations for himself and his race. But he is ever developing, not a perfectly developed being. He finds himself everywhere in need of a guide to advancement. As yet he is able to see but as through a glass darkly. Often he imagines himself pursuing a road that will lead to happiness for himself and others, only to discover that he has been following a blind trail which leads into a cave of gloom, or at least into the house of disappointment. Individually, or as groups or nations, this is the record from ancient Egypt until the present hour. But as out of fruit cultivation there comes at times a superior and individual type, conforming in all ways to its ancestral family, but of finer flavor and more delicate substance than has hitherto been known, so with the family of man, there occasionally emerges from the mass a being of superior mould, with keener appreciation of the things of life and greater powers of leadership.

If he be gifted with those qualities which make for greatness alone, he may rise to eminence, but his works may be detrimental to the general advancement of mankind and he may leave the world, having contributed little or nothing to its happiness. If he is good as well as great, then he proves a blessing, and his thoughts and acts become inspirations to all who may come after him.

Abraham Lincoln may be said to have been born good and great. He can hardly be accounted for in any other way. He saw the light on the borderline between the free and slave states. His youthful ears were assailed by the arguments of men of both parties. He grew to manhood in the same environment. From the time he was old enough to reason at all, until he gave up his life on the altar of truth and justice, he was beset by difficulties which must have appalled a soul not great in itself. He had none of the advantages of the universities, or of private instructors whose studies had taken them to the heights of larger speculation. His companions were rude and uncultured. He met with defeat and disappointment at the outset of every endeavor to find a firm footing for rational thought and action. Yet out of each of these defeats, he gained the sweets of victory. Out of adversity he drew the milk upon which his hungry mind and soul fed, and so found strength for other endeavors. Never was man tried more frequently and under greater difficulties. Never did man face those trials with greater courage and equanimity. Never was man more continually offered the easiest way. And never was man less inclined to succumb to the temptation to be satisfied with the life of his careless fellows, nor more ambitious to rise and to lift them with him to the heights.

That he did rise, that he did lift, not only the companions

of his days, but the broader life of the Nation, and finally the life of the whole world, none will deny. That he came to the world with a soul already prepared for the work, those who will, may doubt, but that from his first act to his last he was governed by such a soul, cannot in reason be denied.

What was Lincoln's work and how did he accomplish it? Was it to free the slaves? Was it to save the Union? Was it not rather to demonstrate to his own time, and to all time, the dignity of manhood, the supreme duty of man to his fellows? In his strong arms he gathered all races of men and all classes of men. King or commoner, he took them to his bosom. In his great heart he gave them a home and the food of love. He hated injustice and institutions and conventions founded on injustice. He saw no beauty in silken robes bought with the sweat of unpaid labor. He saw no glory in a throne on which sat a monarch who ate the bread of his toiling subjects and gave them a stone. He saw no religion in the pulpit where eternal salvation was proclaimed, and present oppression upheld and practiced. He saw no delicacy in the dainty hand on which shone the jewels dug from a mine by serfs scourged to their tasks. He saw no permanency in political institutions which did not consider first of all and finally the laborer by whose product the institution was sustained. He hated cant and hypocrisy. He despised delicacy that was indelicate, refinement which coarsened the refiner, pity that degraded the subject of pity, and sophistry that proclaimed a principle for wrong, equal to the principle for right. He hated wrong with the healthy hatred of a great intelligence trained in a thousand fierce encounters to depend upon itself. Injustice he denied any place in the scheme of life. Yet intol erance was not an element in his nature. It was requisite to his reasoning, not rooted in it. Love was the keynote of his