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THE NEW YORK COMMEMORATION

TEW YORK, the metropolis of the nation, realized its opportunity, and that much was expected of it, and lived up to that expectation in its commemoration of the day. The New York Commemoration was directed by the Lincoln Centenary Committee of the City of New York, appointed by the Honorable George B. McClellan, Mayor of the city; of which committee the Hon. Joseph H. Choate, former Ambassador to the Court of St: James, was made Chairman. The active charge of the celebration was in the hands of an Executive Committee of which Mr. Hugh Hastings was Chairman, and Mr. Franklin Chase Hoyt, Secretary.

At eight o'clock on the morning of the Centenary day, a national salute was fired from all the forts in New York harbor, by the battleships in port, by the three National Guard field batteries, and by the vessels of the New York Naval Militia. In the forenoon, exercises were held in five hundred and sixty-one public schools in Greater New York, with the reading of the Gettysburg Address at noon precisely; while, during the day, exercises were held in each of the forty-six district schools of greater New York, at which prominent speakers delivered addresses on Lincoln. In the afternoon, a great central meeting gathered at Cooper Union, that famous hall where, in 1860, Lincoln delivered an address which made the people of the East realize that he had possibilities for the presidency. His audience on that occasion had been a distinguished one, and testified to his growing national importance at that time. It included William Cullen Bryant, Horace Greeley, David Dudley Field, and, among the younger men present, Joseph H. Choate and Lyman T. Abbott.

On the occasion of the Centenary held in the same hall, the Hon. Joseph H. Choate acted as Chairman; and Lyman T. Abbott, editor of "The Outlook," gave the principal address.

In the evening, exercises were held simultaneously in Carnegie Hall, in the College of the City of New York, and in the New York State National Guard Armories of the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Twentysecond, Twenty-third, Forty-seventh, Sixty-ninth, and Seventy-first Regiments, the Second Battery Field Artillery, and the Seventeenth Separate Company. The exercises at the Seventy-first Regiment Armory were conducted by the Grand Army of the Republic of the City of New York, the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew delivering the address. The exercises at the Seventeenth Separate Company Armory were also conducted by the Grand Army, and the address was delivered by the Hon. H. Stewart McKnight of Flushing, New York. At the American Museum of Natural History, a meeting was held at which Dr. John H. Finley, President of the College of the City of New York, presided; and Mr. William Webster Ellsworth, of "The Century Magazine," delivered an illustrated lecture "Abraham Lincoln; Boy and Man"; while Booker T. Washington was the orator at a banquet given by the Republican Club at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Lithographic copies of the Gettysburg Address had been sent to eighty-five theatres in Greater New York, with the request that the address be read at both the afternoon and evening performances, and at a majority of the theatres this was done, some of them having in addition a special musical programme.

The Committee issued two hundred thousand pamphlets, finely illustrated, and full of interesting and valuable material concerning the life of Lincoln, which were distributed among the pupils in the public and private schools of the city. These were read throughout the city and kept as a remembrance of the Centenary.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AT COOPER INSTITUTE

HON. JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE

UST forty-nine years ago, in this very month of February,

JUST

on this very spot, before just such an audience as this, which filled this historic hall to overflowing, I first saw Abraham Lincoln, and heard him deliver that thrilling address which led to his nomination at Chicago three months afterwards and to his triumphant election in November. The impression of that scene and of that speech can never be effaced from my memory.

After his great success in the West, which had excited the keenest expectation, he came to New York to make a political address as he had supposed at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and it was only when he left his hotel that he found he was coming to Cooper Institute. He appeared in every sense of the word like one of the plain people, among whom he always loved to be counted.

At first sight there was nothing impressive or imposing about him. Nothing but his great stature singled him out from the crowd. His clothes hung awkwardly on his gaunt and giant frame. His face was of a dark pallor, without a tinge of color. His seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle. His deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious. His countenance in repose gave little evidence of that brain-power which had raised him from the lowest to the highest station among his countrymen. As he spoke to me before the meeting opened, he seemed ill at ease, with that sort of apprehension that a young man might feel before facing a new and strange audience whose critical disposition he dreaded. Here were assembled all the noted men of his party-all the learned and cultured men of the city, editors, clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants, critics.

They were all most curious to hear him. His fame as a powerful speaker had come out of the West.

When Mr. Bryant presented him on this platform, a vast sea of eager, upturned faces greeted him, full of intense curiosity to see what this rude son of the people was like. He was equal to the occasion. When he spoke he was transfigured before us. His eye kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to light up the whole assembly as by an electric flash. For an hour and more he held his audience in the hollow of his hand. His style of speech and manner of delivery were severely simple. The grand simplicities of the Bible, with which he was so familiar, were distinctly his. With no attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without pretence or parade, he spoke straight to the point. It was marvellous to see how this untutored man, by mere self-discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, had outgrown all meretricious arts and had found his own way to the grandeur and the strength of absolute simplicity.

He spoke upon the theme which he had mastered so thoroughly. He demonstrated with irresistible force, the power and the duty of the Federal Government to exclude slavery from the Territories. In the kindliest spirit he protested against the threat of the Southern States to destroy the Union if a Republican President were elected. He closed with an appeal to his audience, spoken with all the fire of his aroused and inspired conscience, with a full outpouring of his love of justice and liberty, to maintain their political purpose on that lofty issue of right and wrong which alone could justify it, and not to be intimidated from their high resolve and sacred duty, by any threats of destruction to the government or of ruin to themselves. He concluded with that telling sentence which drove the whole argument home to all our hearts, "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it."

That night the great hall, and the next day the whole city, rang with delighted applause and congratulation, and he who had come as a stranger, departed with the laurels of a great triumph.