THE GREAT STONE FACE

PRESIDENT C. R. VAN HISE

HROUGH the coöperation of the United States and the

THRO

State of Kentucky, a heroic bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln is to be unveiled at his birthplace, Hodgenville, Kentucky, on Decoration Day of this year. This statue is by Mr. Adolph A. Weinman, a pupil of Saint-Gaudens. Photographs of the statue show that this sculptor is a man of the first rank; that he has truly caught the spirit of his great master. Requests for replicas have come to the Commission that has the Lincoln statue in charge, from Providence, Philadelphia, Champaign, St. Louis, Lincoln, Seattle, and, on behalf of Oshkosh, from Mr. Hicks, United States Ambassador to Chile.

After much discussion, the commissioners voted to permit one full-sized replica of the statue to be cast, provided it was placed at the University of Wisconsin. This decision came in consequence of the great interest in the University of Richard Lloyd Jones, one of the commissioners, associate editor of "Collier's Weekly," alumnus of the University, and son of the speaker of to-day, the Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones. When the chance to secure the Lincoln replica for the University came, the question at once arose as to the source of the necessary funds. The situation was placed before Mr. Thomas E. Brittingham, of this city. With largeness of view he appreciated the fortunate opportunity which had come to him to serve the University and the State, and gladly agreed to furnish the required funds. Upon behalf of the Regents, the Faculty, the students, and the people, I wish from my heart to thank Mr. Brittingham for his generosity.

The statue of Lincoln will be unveiled during the coming

Commencement. It will be placed in the centre of the future Court of Honor of the University, a short distance in front of University Hall, facing the east.

It will be remembered that a lad named Ernest, created by Hawthorne's imagination, growing up in a village set in a broad and deep valley, had his attention called by his mother to the noble lineaments of a Great Stone Face on a mighty buttress of one of the surrounding mountains. Among the people there was a tradition that some time a native of the valley would appear with a face like the gigantic one in stone. The growing boy continued his life among the villagers, and each morning he looked out upon the strong and benignant Great Stone Face and hoped that he might some day see the man who was its image. The boy reached manhood and middle age, doing the work of a villager, and lending a hand to his neighbors. Gradually he became a source of strength to the people with whom he was in contact, and very slowly as age grew upon him, his fame extended far beyond his native valley. Several times a celebrated man, born in the valley, returned from the outer world. Each time Ernest looked eagerly forward to his coming, hoping that he would resemble the Great Stone Face. Each time when the noted man appeared, Ernest was profoundly disappointed, but still hoped that before he died he would see in a man the likeness of the face of stone. One evening, while addressing the villagers, as had become his habit, a poet visitor saw the truth, and cried, "Behold, behold, Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face!" During his many years of deep reflection upon the inner meanings of things, and of faithful service to his fellows, his features had become the counterpart of his ideal.

It cannot be doubted that the bronze face of Abraham Lincoln will modify the spiritual faces of the students of the University who are to view daily the sad, calm, sagacious, determined, and rugged face of our great President of the Civil War. What this Lincoln statue will do in the way of developing nobility of character and sustained courage to carry forward the fight for the advancement of the people of this country, no one may foretell; but that it will be perpetu

ally one of the great and high educational forces of the University, no man may doubt. From it, during the centuries to come, many hundreds of thousands of students will gain at least a reflection of the spirit of service to their country that animated Abraham Lincoln. They will persist to the end in the great fight for right and equal justice to all, even as did this man of sorrow. This spirit will pass in some measure to the millions with whom they come in contact, and gradually the widening influence for good of the Lincoln statue will extend throughout the world.

THE GREAT DEBATE; or, THE PROPHET ON THE

STUMP

REV. JENKIN LLOYD JONES

ENTRAL Illinois, seventy-eight years ago, represented,

bination of prairie and forest, its broad stretches of waving, wild grass, were rimmed by ferny glens and brush-protected creeks. The great forests yielded logs and rails for the pioneer fences and cabins, and their branches sheltered the partridges, quail, raccoons, opossums, and deer that fed the pioneer and his family while he was hurrying the hominy and beans that would meet the game on the table, making the fare of the pioneer toothsome as well as wholesome, varied as well as vigorous.

Into this wild country a tall, unkempt stripling drove the four-ox team that carried his father and step-mother, stepbrothers, sisters, and cousin, with their simple household equipment, out of Indiana into Illinois. He had scarcely reached his majority. He tarried with the family long enough to help house his aging parents, and then, with the characteristic independence of the true American lad, struck out for himself; for at twenty-one the true pioneer youth accepted the responsibilities of life, became responsible for his own bed, board, and clothing, literally became the architect of his own fortune. In these pioneer days the true American parent recognized the boy's right to his time-come twenty-one-and, without any sickly distrust or sentimental regret, gave him his dollar and said to him, "Your time is your own; the world is before you; go seek your destiny."

Thus it was, few months after the arrival with the oxteam and the hand-made wagon, shaped out of the sycamore, hickory, and oak of Indiana by the deft hand of Thomas

Lincoln, the father carpenter, that the bare-footed stripling, trousered in buckskin and capped with coonskin, struck out for himself, and, in the adjoining counties of Macon and Sangamon, entered upon that great career that is the most picturesque as well as the most profoundly significant story in American history. It is a story as charming as it is inspiring, as poetic as it is profound. It is the story of the Odysseus of the Western World. The material pegs upon which this story is hung are those of chopper, flatboatman, storekeeper, postmaster, Captain of militia, surveyor, legislator, lawyer, President, martyr.

The more inward traces of the early parts of this great journey from the log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky to the President's chair-the President of a distracted people, the Commander-in-Chief of the noblest army that was ever marshalled on this footstool of the Eternal, the martyred emancipator, who, by the stroke of his pen, enabled four million slaves to stand up as freemen, and made human slavery in these United States under sanction of the law impossible forever more, making at last the boast of our Republic realare those that point to the tireless student, the matchless storyteller, the sad humorist of the Sangamon and the invincible lawyer on the circuit.

Twenty-eight years after, this driver of oxen, whose efficient weapons were only the ox-goad, the axe, and the oar, took the leading part in a great intellectual joust, a tourney of intellect, a memorable political debate. Of this I would speak this morning, on the centennial anniversary of his birthday.

Abe Lincoln, the ox-driver, was easily the champion wrestler when he entered Illinois. His long arms, sinewed with steel, his giant legs, framed as of iron, were more than a match for whoever dared grapple with him. When, twenty-eight years afterwards, Abraham Lincoln came to try his strength in the great intellectual wrestling match of history, he was to clinch a veritable giant of intellect, an adept on the platform, and a master of that great tester of brain which we call the American Stump.

The details of that story are not for me to tell; they should