in low, in this nation and in all nations, there is still the bondage to ignorance and selfishness and sin. Out of the silence there comes back to us this day the voice of him who being dead yet speaketh: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." If indeed we would do honor to the memory of Lincoln, let us hear his great appeal, learn his great language of truth, catch his clear accents of love; and here and now let us, the living, consecrate ourselves to the unfinished work of the dead, "It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." TH (A Speech of Introduction) HON. CHARLES H. WACKER HE call to preside at this meeting I consider a great honor; and I was particularly gratified to be assigned to this part of the city in which I was born and reared. I remember well when this district was barren of houses, and I remember well the gallant soldiers returning from the battlefields of the Civil War, footsore, weary, and careworn, with uniforms tattered and torn, marching north in Clark Street to Camp Fry, between Fullerton and Diversey Avenues, west of Clark Street-a locality to-day solidly built up. Well do I remember, also, the old Court House in which the remains of Abraham Lincoln lay in state, in order to give the people, dumb with sorrow, an opportunity of paying his mortal remains a last tribute of love, gratitude, and respect. No one, able to recall vividly to his mind the stirring events of those days, can feel otherwise than I do; happy and proud to be permitted to assist in rendering tribute to the man who so firmly held the rudder of the Ship of State in those troublous times. I was deeply impressed by a cartoon which recently appeared in a morning paper, entitled: "The Lincoln Forty Years from Now," showing a boy deeply absorbed in reading the story of Lincoln; with an inscription: "There is somewhere in this country to-day an unknown boy who will be the country's greatest man forty years from now.' May not that boy be in this audience; may he not be inspired by the knowledge that ours is a patriotic people, and that we, as a people, honor and revere those who serve us well? Therefore I believe it to be the duty of every good American man and woman to do honor to those who have set lofty examples of high patriotism, sterling citizenship, and conscientious discharge of every public and private duty-examples which will serve as guiding stars for the aspirations of generations to come. IN ABRAHAM LINCOLN OF ILLINOIS PRESIDENT EDWIN ERLE SPARKS "Born to thine own and every coming age, We hail thy birthday, noble son of Illinois." N all the annals of American history, perhaps I might say in the full page of time itself, there is written no stranger case than that of the man whose birthday is celebrated to-day throughout the length and breadth of these United States; indeed, throughout all the world, wherever American citizens may gather together under the Stars and Stripes. Flung into life in the midst of the most abject poverty, he closed life's fitful fever the peer of kings and the heir of all the ages. Hearing in youth the most common errors in English speech, he yet trained himself by his own efforts to write English which in his Second Inaugural Address and his Gettysburg Address may well be compared for purity to any composition in the English language. He was a Western President, coming from the State of Illinois, then the westernmost point reached in the choice of a President for the United States. Born in Kentucky, reared in southern Indiana and Illinois, among Southern people, he loved the South; yet, in the Providence of God, he was destined to deal the South a blow, economically and commercially, from which she has not fully recovered to the present time. Such is the strange case of Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. You and I believe that Abraham Lincoln was destined by God to perform a definite action. If there ever was an agent created for a given purpose, we believe that was Abraham Lincoln. How shall we account for him? Some say that Lincoln was a miracle. I am not willing to 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 out The Colonial American was a transplanted specimen, an exotic brought from the Old World; 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 transAlleghenian; his wits sharpened in the struggle for existence, his shredness brought by combats, with natural forces, his sympathy quickened by frequent sight of suffering, his ori his originality ifested by contract with preeding succuding normal types, and hi's crudity pitifully emphasized by remoteness from contact with what we call cultun. Countless thousands of these people passed into obscurity; Abraha Lincoln through political preferment long survived - and will survive. State College, Pa. Edioni E. Spart Second June там and Facsimile of Manuscript Tribute from Edwin E. Sparks, President of the Pennsylvania State College |