MASTER OF WORDS BY DANIEL KILHAM DODGE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PREFACE DURING the past twenty years and more I have been so deeply interested in the study of Abraham Lincoln as a man and as a writer that some of my friends have charged me with showing the same tendency to revert to the subject, whatever my original intention, that is noted in Mr. Dick in connection with the execution of Charles the First. Indeed, at times I have suspected some of the shrewder of my students, under the stress of unpreparedness, of deliberately turning my attention in this direction, in the hope of postponing the day of reckoning to a more convenient season. I am willing at the outset to admit that Lincoln falls but little short of being the god of my idolatry. This is, however, a form of paganism that is not uncommon among the Americans of this generation and upon it I base the hope that these rather intensive studies V |