And so it is with every genius of this kind, not singular but universal, because there were uses to which it was not challenged. You feel that there is no telling what it might have done in days to come, when there would have been new demands made upon its strength and upon its versatility. He is like some great reservoir of living water which you can freely quaff but can never exhaust. There is something absolutely endless about the lines of such a life.

And you will see that that very fact renders it difficult indeed to point out the characteristics of a man like Lincoln. How shall you describe general human nature brought to its finest development?-for such was this man. We say that he was honest; men used to call him "Honest Abe.' But honesty is not a quality. Honesty is the manifestation of character. Lincoln was honest because there was nothing small or petty about him, and only smallness and pettiness in a nature can produce dishonesty. Such honesty is a quality of largeness. It is that openness of nature which will not condescend to subterfuge, which is too big to conceal itself. Little men run to cover and deceive you. Big men cannot and will not run to cover, and do not deceive you. Of course, Lincoln was honest. But that was not a peculiar characteristic of him; that is a general description of him. He was not small or mean, and his honesty was not produced by any calculation, but was the genial expression of the great nature that was behind it.

Then we also say of Lincoln that he saw things with his own eyes. And it is very interesting that we can pick out individual men to say that of them. The opposite of the proposition is, that most men see things with other men's eyes. And that is the pity of the whole business of the world. Most men do not see things with their own eyes. If they did they would not be so inconspicuous as they consent to be. What most persons do is to live up to formulas and opinions and believe them, and never give themselves the trouble to ask whether they are true or not; so that there is a great deal of truth in saying that the trouble is, that men believe so many things that are not so, because they have taken them

But Lincoln

at second hand; they have accepted them in the form they were given to them. They have not reëxamined them. They have not seen the world with their own eyes. saw it with his own eyes. And he not only saw the surface of it, but saw beneath the surface of it; for the characteristic of the seeing eye is that it is a discerning eye, seeing also that which is not caught by the surface; it penetrates to the heart of the subjects it looks upon. Not only did this man look upon life with a discerning eye. If you read of his youth and of his early manhood, it would seem that these were his only and sufficient pleasures. Lincoln seemed to covet nothing from his business except that it would give him leisure enough to do this very thing-to look at other people; to talk about them; to sit by the stove in the evening and discuss politics with them; to talk about all the things that were going on, to make shrewd, penetrating comments upon them, to speak his penetrating jests.

I had a friend once who said he seriously thought that the business of life was conversation. There is a good deal of Mr. Lincoln's early life which would indicate that he was of the same opinion. He believed that, at any rate, the most attractive business of life was conversation; and conversation, with Lincoln, was an important part of the business of life, because it was conversation which uncovered the meanings of things and illuminated the hidden places where nobody but Lincoln had ever thought of looking.

You remember the very interesting story told about Mr. Lincoln in his early practice as a lawyer. Some business firm at a distance wrote to him and asked him to look into the credit of a certain man who had asked to have credit extended to him by the firm. Mr. Lincoln went around to see the man at his place of business, and reported to this effect: that he had found the man in an office which contained one table and two chairs, "But," he added, "there is a hole in the corner that would bear looking into." That anecdote, slight as it is, is typical of Mr. Lincoln. He sometimes found the character of the man lurking in a hole; and when his speech touched that character it was illuminated; you could

not frame otherwise a better characterization. That seemed to be the business of the man's life; to look at things and to comment upon them; and his comment upon them was just as fearless and just as direct as it was shrewd and penetrating.

I know some men can see anything they choose to see, but they won't say anything; who are dried up at the source by that enemy of mankind which we call Caution. God save a free country from cautious men,-men, I mean, cautious for themselves,-for cautious men are men who will not speak the truth if the speaking of it threatens to damage them. Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

This man had no caution. He was absolutely direct and fearless. You will say that he had very little worldly goods to lose. He did not allow himself to be encumbered by riches, therefore he could say what he pleased. You know that men who are encumbered by riches are apt to be more silent than others. They have given hostages to fortune, and for them it is very necessary to maintain the status quo. Now, Mr. Lincoln was not embarrassed in this way. A change of circumstances would suit him just as well as the permanency of existing circumstances. But I am confident that if Mr. Lincoln had had the gift of making money, he nevertheless would not have restrained his gift for saying things; that he nevertheless would have ignored the trammels and despised caution and said what he thought. But one interesting thing about Mr. Lincoln is that no matter how shrewd or penetrating his comment, he never seemed to allow a matter to grip him. He seemed so directly in contact with it that he could define things other men could not define; and yet he was detached. He did not look upon it as if he were part of it. And he was constantly salting all the delightful things that he said, with the salt of wit and humor.

I would not trust a saturnine man, but I would trust a wit; because a wit is a man who can detach himself, and not get so buried in the matter he is dealing with as to lose that sure and free movement which a man can have only when he is detached. If a man can comment upon his own misfortunes