CHAPTER VII

LECTURES AND OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES

DURING 1859, and early in 1860, Lincoln delivered a lecture entitled, "Discoveries, Inventions, and Improvements," which in some portions suggests the "Milwaukee Address" on agriculture. Lincoln refers to it on several occasions and one letter declining an invitation to give it in Galesburg has been preserved. He refers to it as "a sort of lecture read to three different audiences during the last month and this," adding that he could not spare the time from the courts. On Washington's Birthday, 1860, just before leaving for New York to deliver the "Cooper Institute Address," Lincoln gave this lecture, apparently for the last time, before the Springfield Library Association. The MS. of the lecture is preserved in

the great Gunther collection of Lincolniana of Chicago. Evidently it is not complete and it is more than probable that Lincoln did not confine himself to the MS., but made changes and additions as he spoke. It is interesting in one respect in containing the only quotation from Plato to be found in Lincoln. I should not, however, take this as internal evidence that Lincoln had read the Greek philosopher, as he was in the habit of picking up quotations wherever he happened to find them, as a hen picks up corn.

An interesting account of this lecture is given by Mrs. N. B. Judd, of Chicago, which tends to confirm the impression that it was not always delivered in accordance with the text. Mr. Lincoln was spending the evening on the Judd piazza overlooking Lake Michigan and

"seemed greatly impressed with the wondrous beauty of the scene, and carried by its impressiveness away from all thought of jars and turmoil of earth. In that mild, pleasant voice,

attuned to harmony with his surroundings, as was his wont when his soul was stirred by aught that was lovely or beautiful, Mr. Lincoln began to speak of the mystery which for ages enshrouded and shut out those distant worlds above us from our own; of the poetry and beauty which was seen and felt by seers of old when they contemplated Orion and Arcturus as they wheeled seemingly around the earth, in their nightly course; of the discoveries since the invention of the telescope, which had thrown a flood of light and knowledge on what before was incomprehensible."

Lincoln explained his interest in these matters by saying that he had prepared and delivered a lecture on "The Age of Different Inventions."

There is, also, a fragment of a lecture on Niagara Falls and Arnold mentions a lecture on Burns, about which I am extremely skeptical. The fragment contains one of the most imaginative passages in Lincoln's writings and

he may in part have been thinking of this in his discussion at the Judd home:

"The mere physical aspect of Niaraga Falls is only this. Yet this is really a very small part of that world's wonder. . . . It calls up the indefinite past. When Columbus first sought this continent; when Christ suffered on the cross; when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea; nay, even when Adam first came from the hands of his Maker: then, as now, Niagara was roaring here. The Mammoth and Mastodon, so long dead that fragments of their monstrous bones alone testify that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara-in that long, long time never still for a moment, never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested."

Nowhere else in Lincoln's writings do we find so fine an example of the historical imagination. It is only faintly anticipated in the two early rhetorical addresses.

In 1850, Lincoln seems to have delivered a law lecture, though where and under what cir

cumstances is not known. An interesting fragment of it has been preserved, interesting both as illustrating Lincoln's innate modesty and showing his high conception of legal ethics:

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser-in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."

What a contempt would Dodson and Fogg, or even the less enterprising Mr. Perker, have for such a lawyer!

On September 30, 1859, Lincoln delivered the annual address at the Wisconsin State Fair, in Milwaukee. This speech is remarkable for two reasons. It is the only later long, nonpolitical speech by Lincoln that has been preserved and it has been pronounced by a leading authority on agriculture-the late