"Let American High Schools teach at least one year of Lincoln. Teaching the use of the English language is one of the prime objects of public school instruction. Lincoln was one of the masters of English. His simple, luminous sentences, which go as straight as bullets are models for the pupil which cannot be improved upon. School instruction seeks to form and strengthen a pupil's reasoning powers. To follow Lincoln's mind through his great controversies is an education in reasoning that no classical example can surpass. "It is high time he became a staple of American education. His collected writings and speeches not only contain the soul of the American story but are highly worth reading simply as literature -as the picture of a mind slowly evolving out of apparent common-place into supreme greatness, and so leading a people through a great crisis." -JUDGE R. M. WANAMAKER. A INTRODUCTION By BISHOP JOHN W. HAMILTON, D.D., LL.D. NOTHER Life of Abraham Lincoln? No, not a biography, but the latest authentic information relative to many features of his life in which the world is deeply interested. Such information is always in demand and at this time it is peculiarly welcome. In our own country Abraham Lincoln is today held in higher esteem than ever before, and public interest in his life and in all for which he is known to have contended, is constantly increasing. In public schools and institutions of higher education, in organizations for literary culture and pursuits, on the lecture platform and in the pulpit, Lincoln's name is heard more frequently and with greater interest than is that of any other American. And scarcely less interesting or potential is his name in other lands. The world has set its halo about him for what it already knows of him but that only increases the desire to know more. And Doctor Ervin Chapman has responded to that desire by producing a work in which there is a great fund of information concerning Lincoln never before published. He has been able to do this because of his intimate knowledge of the workings of the general government and his close and prolonged acquaintance and association with eminent men during Lincoln's administration. He is, therefore, able to write with authority and has done so in a manner so illuminating and instructive as to win for himself a well accredited distinction among all who have written about Lincoln and the times in which he lived. Doctor Chapman's eminent service during his long life devoted so fully to the progressive and memorable achieve |