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THE CINCINNATI COMMEMORATION

T Cincinnati, preparations for the celebration began as far in advance as October, 1908, when, at a meeting of the Cincinnati Schoolmasters' Club, it was suggested that steps be taken to properly observe the Lincoln Centenary. A Committee was appointed by President E. D. Lyon to confer with the various civic, business, educational, and other bodies of the city. At the conference held to form the plans, there were present representatives from over fifty organizations. This joint conference formed an organization, and adopted the name "The Lincoln Centenary Memorial Association," and under its auspices, with Mr. W. C. Washburn as the able President, the Centenary celebration was planned and carried out. The funds necessary for carrying out the elaborate plans of the Association were provided by the organizations represented in its membership.

On the Centenary day, memorial exercises were held in all the schools; and special exercises were held by order of Archbishop Moeller in the Catholic parochial schools of the Cincinnati diocese; all the municipal buildings, and many of the business houses, were fittingly decorated, and the whole atmosphere of the city breathed the spirit of tribute and commemoration.

The principal meeting of the day was held in Music Hall, in the afternoon. At two o'clock members of the Grand Army of the Republic, four hundred strong, marched to the hall and took seats in the section especially reserved for them. Dr. J. M. Withrow, President of the Board of Education, presided, and a choir of seven hundred and fifty school children, accompanied by an orchestra of fifty pieces, rendered the patriotic airs and War-time melodies which have come down to us from the day of Lincoln. One of the special features was an ode "Our Lincoln"-by W. C. Washburn, rendered by this children's choir, under the direction of Professor Joseph

Surdo, composer of the music. The orator of the day was Bishop William Fraser McDowell, of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Chicago, who delivered to an enthusiastic audience, "An Appreciation of Lincoln."

In the evening, members of the Loyal Legion gave a banquet, with commemorative exercises, in their quarters at Masonic Hall, where Judge Frederick A. Henry, of Cleveland, acted as the speaker of the occasion.

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BRAHAM LINCOLN was an American product. The world itself has seen nothing finer. America has not done it twice. When one speaks of Lincoln he speaks of something that only happened once. He is one of the surprises of history. No land but America has produced his like. When he was born, a hundred years ago, we had about seven millions of people. When he died, forty-four years ago, we had thirty-five millions of people. To-day we number ninety millions.

Those who knew Lincoln are few in number now, but he is enshrined in the nation's heart as no one else is. He died at the end of a civil war whose passions were bitter, whose bitterness is not wholly gone, but we can honor this leader of that war without awakening bitterness anywhere. His name is the symbol of peace, his character an inspiration to union, his life a perpetual call to charity and fraternity.

That life began in Kentucky, continued in Indiana and Illinois, and flowered out in splendor at last upon the nation and the nations. His parents were so poor that life was all they could give their son; so poor that they could give the world nothing except their son. We praise him to-day, but can not forget his mother, Nancy Hanks

"O soul obscure,

Whose wings life bound,

And soft death folded

Under the ground;

"Wilding lady,

Still and true,
Who gave us Lincoln

And never knew;

"To you at last

Our praise and tears,
Love and a song

Through the nation's years!

"Mother of Lincoln,

Our tears, our praise;

A battle-flag

And the victor's bays!"

Abraham Lincoln was not a youthful prodigy. He was neither precocious nor angelic. He had neither luck nor circumstance in his favor. He had as poor a chance as ever greeted a boy under our flag. It was not a fair chance. He made it turn out right. He did not complain of luck, or seek excuses for failure. He put his foot on adversity and rose to opportunity. There were not many books in all that region. He read them all. There was not much going on. He got into contact with every sign of life about him, whether it was Circuit Court or country store. He had five school teachers, and went to school less than a year. But all his life he had the long arms of his mind out in every direction for information, and "he never finished his education." did not know what many others know, but he knew what he knew, and was not uneducated. He mastered a limited list of books. The Son of the Nazareth carpenter, like the son of the Kentucky carpenter, had one small collection of books, but from them he got a training in literature, in history, in insight, in patriotism, and in religion. The son of the Kentucky carpenter had a small list-Esop's "Fables,"

He

"Robinson Crusoe," the "Revised Statutes of Indiana," Pilgrim's Progress," Parson Weems' "Life of Washington," The Bible, Shakespeare, and a "History of the United States." And these he read by day and night, with a slow mind but a sure one-a mind he declared to be like steel, hard to scratch but retaining every scratch made upon it. And from these books he got a training in literature, in history, in philosophy, in patriotism, and in religion. Such a man is educated.

He was not divinely gifted nor inspired. He was just an American boy, born in poverty, in a locality where life was hard and meagre; and without genius he rose to the heights by hard work. Poverty did not do it. Anyhow, poverty has never done it again. Ancestry did not do it. Hardships did not do it. He did not learn the language of the Gettysburg Speech at the country stores of Indiana or Illinois.

"The little farm that raised a man, was not enchanted ground." Circumstances neither created him nor hindered him from working out his life. He did what any American boy can do, ought to do-made the most of life's chance.

He came into the world with a great company. Lowell once declared that the sixteenth century was spendthrift of genius, that any family might expect an attack of greatness as it looked for measles and whooping cough. "Hamlet,' Newton's "Principia," Bacon's "Novum Organum," were all in danger of teething at once. The single year 1809 was prodigal to the point of recklessness in producing great men. That year saw the birth of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William E. Gladstone, Charles Darwin, Mendelssohn, and Abraham Lincoln. It must have seemed a strange planet that had on it, at the same time, Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln.

Compared with the great men of his time or the great men of all time, Lincoln does not suffer or grow small. Washington was rich; Lincoln was poor. Both nobly served the Republic and freedom, showing at two supreme crises how the country can be greatly served by rich and poor alike. Washington piloted the young Republic through its first days,

Lincoln through the days of its fiercest testing. One pushed the door of liberty ajar, the other opened it wide and "saved the last best hope of earth." One led the colonies to the Declaration of Independence, the other fulfilled that early declaration by these immortal words, "In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free." One set a nation out on its wide way among nations. The other taught us that a nation worth creating is worth saving, and worth saving all the time. Of each it can be said, "His palms never itched for a bribe, his tongue never blistered with a lie."' Each came when he was needed, and each met the need fully. Need alone does not produce such men. Barrenness, want, selfishness, or ambition can not bring to a nation men like these. Washington rose not because our fathers needed a soldier who could win battles, but because the colonies needed a man of truth and tranquillity, "a standard to which the wise and just should repair." Lincoln arose, not because our later fathers needed a debater, but because they needed a truth teller; not because they needed a conqueror, but because they needed one to whom peace was a sacrament and mercy a divine force; not because they needed a man who could win an election or finance a war, but because they did sorely need in a day of strife one who could show "charity for all and malice to none.

Thus William of Orange arose in the Dutch Republic, Washington and Lincoln in the American Republic, each of them "tranquil in the midst of raging billows."

Measured by any of the real tests, our Abraham, friend of God like the old Abraham, appears to be one of the mightiest figures seen in a thousand years. He was a real leader of men-not a tyrant driving them, nor a weakling following them, nor a visionary getting out of touch with them. He perfectly knew the average mind and the strong mind. He knew how valuable were men like Seward, and Stanton, and Chase, and many others who did not agree with him. Many strong men abused him, many tried to override him. He was silent under abuse and always master of his own soul and his own policies. Men said his clothes did not fit him, that

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