types may persist, but not with him. No one went before. No one followed after. He flourished alone, as a root out of a dry ground. In the mysterious laboratory of Nature he was touched with the magic wand. That touch gave him of the fire of fires. In the murky night of his early years there glowed that invisible flame within. In the quiet of the night-time, through the silence that is in the starry sky, there came to him that long, far call. He was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. He went out not knowing whither he went. "A Hand is stretched to him from out the dark, And he went through life as one impelled, haunted by a sense of Destiny, shadowed by a Presence that would not be put by. Men did not know him who heard only his ready story and his ringing laugh. All that was but the phosphorescence playing on the surface; the depths beneath were dark and touched with gloom. He was called to go by the sorrowful way, bearing the awful burden of his people's woe, the cry of the uncomforted in his ears, the bitterness of their passion on his heart. Misunderstood, misjudged, he was the most solitary man of his time. He had to tread the winepress alone, and of the people none went with him. And he turned not back. He never faltered. As one upheld, sustained by the unseen Hand, he set his face steadfastly, undaunted, unafraid, until in Death's black minute he paid glad Life's arrears: the slaves free! the Union saved! himself immortal! Who that reads the Lincoln story can miss the sublime significance of his life? Born in obscurity, nurtured in ignorance, he grew to the stature of national heroism. He wrote the decree of Emancipation for his own Republic, changed from war to peace the royal message of the mightiest Empire of the world, and shines to-day a peerless name the world will not let die. Lincoln rather than any other might have stood as the original of Tennyson's master-statesman, for almost as with prophetic vision the great Laureate foresaw the rise of Abraham Lincoln,— "As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began, "Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, "Who makes by force his merit known, "And, moving up from high to higher, This centennial celebration will have failed of its high purpose if it ends in eulogy of the dead. Our words of praise will vanish into thin air and be forgotten. We ourselves shall turn again to the common ways of men. The tumult and the shouting shall die. And all this acclaim of the mighty dead shall be but a foolish boast unless there comes to us from out the Unseen where they abide the enduring strength and the victorious faith by which they went up to die. It is but vanity for us to profess honor for the name of Lincoln if we refuse to give ourselves to carry on the work for which he gave his life. That work is not yet done. It cries aloud for strong hands and brave hearts. Slavery, as he knew it, is no more, but the struggle of human rights and social wrongs is not yet ended. The planter autocracy is overthrown, with none to mourn for its defeat, but the sordid and selfish autocracy of wealth and privilege and power is insolent as ever. In the darkness of your terrible streets, they still languish and die, by the sweat of whose faces the privileged and the proud still eat bread. In high place and in low, in this nation and in all nations, there is still the bondage to ignorance and selfishness and sin. Out of the silence there comes back to us this day the voice of him who being dead yet speaketh: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." If indeed we would do honor to the memory of Lincoln, let us hear his great appeal, learn his great language of truth, catch his clear accents of love; and here and now let us, the living, consecrate ourselves to the unfinished work of the dead, "It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." THE (A Speech of Introduction) HON. CHARLES H. WACKER HE call to preside at this meeting I consider a great honor; and I was particularly gratified to be assigned to this part of the city in which I was born and reared. I remember well when this district was barren of houses, and I remember well the gallant soldiers returning from the battlefields of the Civil War, footsore, weary, and careworn, with uniforms tattered and torn, marching north in Clark Street to Camp Fry, between Fullerton and Diversey Avenues, west of Clark Street—a locality to-day solidly built up. Well do I remember, also, the old Court House in which the remains of Abraham Lincoln lay in state, in order to give the people, dumb with sorrow, an opportunity of paying his mortal remains a last tribute of love, gratitude, and respect. No one, able to recall vividly to his mind the stirring events of those days, can feel otherwise than I do; happy and proud to be permitted to assist in rendering tribute to the man who so firmly held the rudder of the Ship of State in those troublous times. I was deeply impressed by a cartoon which recently appeared in a morning paper, entitled: "The Lincoln Forty Years from Now," showing a boy deeply absorbed in reading the story of Lincoln; with an inscription: "There is somewhere in this country to-day an unknown boy who will be the country's greatest man forty years from now." May not that boy be in this audience; may he not be inspired by the knowledge that ours is a patriotic people, and that we, as a people, honor and revere those who serve us well? Therefore I believe it to be the duty of every good American man and woman to do honor to those who have set lofty examples of high patriotism, sterling citizenship, and conscientious discharge of every public and private duty-examples which will serve as guiding stars for the aspirations of generations to come. ABRAHAM LINCOLN OF ILLINOIS PRESIDENT EDWIN ERLE SPARKS "Born to thine own and every coming age, We hail thy birthday, noble son of Illinois." 'N all the annals of American history, perhaps I might say in the full page of time itself, there is written no stranger case than that of the man whose birthday is celebrated to-day throughout the length and breadth of these United States; indeed, throughout all the world, wherever American citizens may gather together under the Stars and Stripes. Flung into life in the midst of the most abject poverty, he closed life's fitful fever the peer of kings and the heir of all the ages. Hearing in youth the most common errors in English speech, he yet trained himself by his own efforts to write English which in his Second Inaugural Address and his Gettysburg Address may well be compared for purity to any composition in the English language. He was a Western President, coming from the State of Illinois, then the westernmost point reached in the choice of a President for the United States. Born in Kentucky, reared in southern Indiana and Illinois, among Southern people, he loved the South; yet, in the Providence of God, he was destined to deal the South a blow, economically and commercially, from which she has not fully recovered to the present time. Such is the strange case of Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. You and I believe that Abraham Lincoln was destined by God to perform a definite action. If there ever was an agent created for a given purpose, we believe that was Abraham Lincoln. How shall we account for him? Some say that Lincoln was a miracle. I am not willing to |