let it rest at that. What is a miracle? A miracle is God moving in such a way as to confuse human understanding. Lincoln was not a miracle. I believe it is your duty and my duty, in order to ascertain why he was the man for the occasion, to try to examine Lincoln by some of the great laws of creation which have been formulated for us.

We know that "there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune"; and there is a tide in the affairs of the individual man which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Yet we often say that the man and the occasion rarely meet. Sometimes opportunity seems never to come to a man, and sometimes when the opportunity comes the man is not prepared for it. You and I will agree that in the case of Abraham Lincoln the opportunity came, and the man was ready, and success followed.

In the brief time I have at my disposal, I can take only one or two of those "great laws of creation" and apply them to Abraham Lincoln. First, consider the law of environment. We are all familiar with the workings of that law,-the law of surroundings. We have utilized it constantly in many ways; both in our families and in our schools. We ornament our houses and we decorate the walls of our school buildings. Why? Because we believe in the influence of environment, of surroundings. What was the environment of Abraham Lincoln in his formative days? It was the environment of the American frontier.

As the mass of people have moved across this continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, there has always been a front line of hardy spirits-the pioneers; those who felled the forests; those who built the log cabins; those who cultivated the fields. We call them the frontier of the American people, the vanguard of the onward march. Abraham Lincoln lived during all his formative days on what was then the frontier, in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. Many characteristics marked this front line of people. For one thing, it contributed largely to American democracy. It did not make much difference out on the frontier who your grandfather was, but it did make a great deal of difference what

Fiftieth Anniversary

Lincoln and Douglas Debate

Thursday, August 27th, 1908.

every question thoroughly, and
Intely honest, not only with others,
with himself; he had fully the courage
of his individual opinion, and ouse
his opinion was fully made up, he could
not be swerved from it. He defended
great
thon himself. He met the
National crisis better than

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Could have done, because he was infinitely patient, always kindly, yielding to others in now exentines, but never yeahding one iste of principle.

Facsimile of Manuscript Tribute from Gen. Smith D. Atkins, of Illinois

The colonial American was a transplanted specimen, an exotic brought from the Old Horld; the modern American is generie, a product of Old World inheritance and New World environment. Midway between these two types is the transition stage represented by the pioneer, the frontiersman, the transAlleghenion; his wits sharpened in the struggle for existence, his shrewdness brought out by combats, with natural forces, his sight of suffering, with preeding sympathy quickened by frequent his originality ifested by contrast

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suecuding normal types, and crudity pitifully emphasized by remoteness from contact with what we call Cultun. Countless thousands of these people passed into obser bscurity;

Abraham

Lincoln through political priferment survived - and will long survive. State College Pa. Edini E. Spart

Second June

Facsimile of Manuscript Tribute from Edwin E. Sparks, President of the Pennsylvania State College

you could do. It was an aristocracy of worth, not of birth. They had to do things out on the frontier, and Abraham Lincoln was trained in that compelling environment.

What did this frontier do for the man? In the first place, it taught him to investigate. We do little investigating now. Why? Because we have so many books. "What is the use, we say, "of spending time investigating, when we can read it in the books?" Abraham Lincoln had very few books. In all his youthful life he had to look into things himself. The lawyers who travelled with him around the circuit told that frequently when he would see a tree of unusual dimensions or some peculiarity of growth, he would dismount from his horse and examine the tree. When his little son received a mechanical toy, the father was not satisfied until he took it to pieces. He wanted to see how it worked-investigating always. When he came back from serving his second session in Congress, a number of members came with him. They came over the Great Lakes, around by Niagara Falls. Most of the party stayed on deck, talking politics, smoking, and telling stories; but Lincoln was always down in the engineroom, even amongst the stokers, examining everything, finding out how it worked. He showed a natural talent for investigating.

Soon after this Lincoln took out his patent. How many of our Presidents have taken out a patent? I must sometime try to ascertain the answer to that question by looking over the records in the Patent Office, which is a task of no small dimensions. Lincoln took out a patent. What was that patent? Was it applicable to Europe? Was it applicable to the Atlantic coast, or the plains? No, it was something needed over here, in the valley, on the frontier. It was a scheme for navigating the Western waters at times when the rivers were low. During the Summer season, the rivers divided and sandbars appeared. Lincoln's plan was to put buoys under the keels of vessels, and when the vessels came to obstructions, like sandbars in the river, they would inflate these buoys with air, which would lift the vessel over the bar and take it on. That was Lincoln's patent. He never sold

one, so far as I know, but it serves to illustrate my point, that he was an investigator. And, all during the Civil War, diplomats, financiers, ambassadors and others testified to the wonderful way in which Lincoln investigated every matter brought before him. He investigated it in advance. That was what the frontier environment had taught him.

This frontier environment also taught the man extreme caution. One man never went alone to plough in the field; two men always went together, and while one man ploughed, the other man watched against the Indians. And it was said in later times, after the country was settled, if two of these frontiersmen met in town, that, remembering the old habit, when they talked together they stood with their backs to each other, on the lookout for danger. I am not sure, in these automobile days, whether we will not return to that habit.

The frontiersman, when ploughing, had to plough so carefully that he would not break his plough, because he could not probably buy another plough within twenty miles, or find a blacksmith within a ten miles' journey. The thing which characterized Abraham Lincoln as President, if there was one characteristic above another, was his extreme caution. moved so slowly in the Civil War that he never had occasion to wish to retrace his steps.

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I see, scattered in the audience, some people who perchance remember the days of the Civil War, and they will bear me witness that Horace Greeley and other hot-headed men constantly urged Lincoln to more haste. Mr. Greeley called him, "Mr. Ready-to-Wait"; "Mr. Faint-Heart"; "Mr. Man-Afraid-of-His-Shadow." They said, "Why don't you do something? Free the slaves! Close the War! Do something! Do something!" No, Lincoln, from his frontiersman training, was moving so slowly that he never had occasion to retrace his steps. He even gave a hundred days' warning in advance before he issued his Emancipation Proclamation. His slow motion saved the Union from breaking its plough!

All this frontier training taught a man to be an all-round man. Think what an all-round mam Lincoln was. There