N°

XXVIII.

DONN PIATT.

No truth found Sir Henry

greater truth found expression in poetic.

words than that which Sir Henry Taylor puts in the speech of Philip Van Artevelde, when he says, "the world knows not its greatest men." The poet restricted his meaning to

"The kings of thought,

Who wage contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that will not pass away.

But it extends, as well, to those men of affairs who earn the admiration of the crowd they control. This ignorance comes of the fact that great men have enemies while alive, and friends when dead; and, between the two, the objects of hate and love pass into historical phantoms far more unreal than their ghosts are supposed to be. With us, when a leader dies, all good men go to lying about him, and from the monument that covers his remains to the last echo of the rural press, in speeches, sermons, eulogies and reminiscences, we have naught but pious lies. There is no tyranny so despotic as that of public opinion among a free people. The rule

of the majority is to the last extent exacting and brutal. When brought to bear upon our eminent men, it is also senseless. Poor Garfield, with his sensitive temperament, was almost driven to suicide by abuse while alive. He fell by the shot of an assassin, and passed in an instant to the roll of popular saints. One day it was contempt to say a word in his favor, the next it was dangerous to repeat any of the old abuse.

History is, after all, the crystallization of popular beliefs. As a pleasant fiction is more acceptable than a naked fact, and as the historian shapes his wares, like any other dealer, to suit his customers, one can readily see that our chronicles are only a duller sort of fiction than the popular novels so eagerly read; not that they are true, but they deal in what we long to have-the truth. Popular beliefs, in time, come to be superstitions, and create gods and devils. Thus Washington is deified into an impossible man, and Aaron Burr has passed into a like impossible human monster. Through the same process Abraham Lincoln, one of our truly great, has almost gone from human knowledge. I hear of him, read of him in eulogies and biographies, and fail to recognize the man I encountered, for the first time, in the canvass that called him from private life to be President of the then disuniting United States.

General Robert E. Schenck and I had been

selected to canvass Southern Illinois in behalf of free soil and Abraham Lincoln. That part of Illinois was then known as Egypt, and in our missionary labors we learned there that the American eagle sometimes lays rotten eggs. Our labors on the stump were closed in the wigwam at Springfield a few nights previous to the election. Mr. Lincoln was present, and listened, with intense interest, to General Schenck's able argument. I followed in a cheerful review of the situation, that seemed to amuse the crowd, and none more so than our candidate for the Presidency. We were both invited to return to Springfield, at the jubilee, should success make such rejoicing proper. We did return, for this homely son of toil was elected, and we found Springfield drunk with delight. On the day of our arrival we were invited to a supper at the house of the President-elect. It was a plain, comfortable frame structure, and the supper was an oldfashioned mess of indigestion, composed mainly of cake, pies and chickens, the last evidently killed in the morning, to be eaten, as best they might, that evening.

sat, far into the night, talk

After the supper, we ing over the situation. liest man I ever saw. huge skeleton in clothes. and feet looked out of

Mr. Lincoln was the home-
His body seemed to me a
Tall as he was, his hands
proportion, so long and

clumsy were they. Every movement was awkward in the extreme. He sat with one leg thrown over the other, and the pendent foot swung almost to the floor. And all the while, two little boys, his sons, clambered over those legs, patted his cheeks, pulled his nose, and poked their fingers in his eyes, without causing reprimand or even notice. He had a face that defied artistic skill to soften or idealize. The multiplicity of photographs and engravings makes it familiar to the public. It was capable of few expressions, but those were extremely striking. When in repose, his face was dull, heavy and repellent. It brightened, like a lit lantern, when animated. His dull eyes would fairly sparkle with fun, or express as kindly a look as I ever saw, when moved by some matter of human interest.

I soon discovered that this strange and strangely gifted man, while not at all cynical, was a sceptic. His view of human nature was low, but goodnatured. I could not call it suspicious, but he believed only what he saw. This low estimate of humanity blinded him to the South. He could not understand that men would get up in their wrath and fight for an idea. He considered the movement South as a sort of political game of bluff, gotten up by politicians, and meant solely to frighten the North. He believed that, when the leaders saw their efforts in that direction were unavailing, the

tumult would subside. "They won't give up the offices," I remember he said, and added, "were it believed that vacant places could be had at the North Pole, the road there would be lined with dead Virginians." He unconsciously accepted, for himself and party, the same low line that he awarded the South. Expressing no sympathy for the slave, he laughed at the Abolitionists as a disturbing element easily controlled, and without showing any dislike to the slave-holders, said only that their ambition was to be restrained.

I gathered more of this from what Mrs. Lincoln said than from the utterances of our host. This good lady injected remarks into the conversation with more force than logic, and was treated by her husband with about the same good-natured indifference with which he regarded the troublesome boys. In the wife's talk of the coming administration there was an amusing assumption that struck me as very womanly, but somewhat ludicrous. For instance, she said, "The country will find how we regard that abolition sneak, Seward!" Mr. Lincoln put the remarks aside, very much as he did the hand of one of his boys when that hand invaded his capacious mouth.

We were not at a loss to get at the fact, and the reason for it, in the man before us. Descended from the poor whites of a slave State, through many