Read the following meanings of words used: Hogarth (hō'gärth): a famous resonant (rez'ô-nănt): in a English painter. pregnant: alive with. Willard's Hotel: the hotel in clear, resounding voice. crystal globe: a political reference to the practice of certain persons who pretend to be able to see the future by looking into a crystal globe. caravel (kǎr'a-věl): a small ship used by Columbus when he discovered America. Lincoln's most noted political conscious rectitude (rěk'ti-tūd): opponent. knowing that he is right. ABRAHAM LINCOLN Amid the noise and confusion, the clashing of intellects like sabers bright, and the booming of the big oratorical guns of the North and the South, now definitely arrayed, there came one day into the North5ern camp one of the oddest figures imaginable; the figure of a man who, in spite of an appearance somewhat at outs with Hogarth's line of beauty, wore a serious aspect, if not an air of command, and, pausing to utter a single sentence that might be heard above the 10 din, passed on and for a moment disappeared. The sentence was pregnant with meaning. The man bore a commission from God on high! He said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half free and half slave. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided." He was Abraham Lincoln. How shall I describe him to you? Shall I speak 5 of him as I first saw him immediately on his arrival in the national capitol, the chosen President of the United States, his appearance quite as strange as the story of his life, which was then but half known and half told, or shall I use the words of another and a 10 more graphic word painter? In January, 1861, Colonel A. K. McClure, of Fennsylvania, journeyed to Springfield, Illinois, to meet and confer with the man he had done so much to elect, but whom he had never personally known. "I15 went directly from the depot to Lincoln's house," says Colonel McClure, "and rang the bell, which was answered by Lincoln himself opening the door. I doubt whether I wholly concealed my disappointment at meeting him. Tall, gaunt, ungainly, ill- 20 clad, with a homeliness of manner that was unique in itself, I confess that my heart sank within me as I remembered that this was the man chosen by a great nation to become its ruler in the gravest period of its history. I remember his dress as if it were 25 but yesterday snuff-colored and slouchy pantaloons; open black vest, held by a few brass buttons; straight or evening dress coat, with tightly fitting sleeves to exaggerate his long, bony arms, all sup plemented by an awkwardness that was uncommon among men of intelligence. Such was the picture I met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. We sat down in his plainly furnished parlor, and were uninterrupted 5 during the nearly four hours I remained with him; and, little by little, as his earnestness, sincerity, and candor were developed in conversation, I forgot all the grotesque qualities which so confounded me when I first greeted him. Before half an hour had passed, I learned 10 not only to respect, but, indeed, to reverence the man." A graphic portrait, truly, and not unlike. I recall him, two months later, a little less uncouth, a little better dressed, but in singularity and in angularity 15 much the same. All the world now takes an interest in every detail that concerned him, or that relates to the weird tragedy of his life and death. And who was this peculiar being, destined in his mother's arms for cradle he had none so pro20 foundly to affect the future of humankind? He has told us himself, in words so simple and unaffected, so idiomatic and direct, that we can neither misread them, nor improve upon them. Answering one who, in 1859, had asked him for some biographic 25 particulars, Abraham Lincoln wrote: "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. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where, a year or two later, he was 5 killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. "My father (Thomas Lincoln) at the death of his father was but six years of age. By the early death of his father, and the very narrow circumstances of 10 his mother, he was, even in childhood, a wandering, laboring boy, and grew up literally without education. He never did more in the way of writing than bunglingly to write his own name. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, 15 Indiana, in my eighth year. It was a wild region, with many bears and other animals still in the woods. 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.' 20 If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood he was looked upon as a wizard. 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 25 was all. 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 till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon County. |