ses of Fourth-of-July
Speakers Goaded Him On to the
Study of Declamation.

"It was _not_ because I happened to have long legs that I decided to put
myself as Abraham Lincoln into a play."

So said Benjamin Chapin when I approached him with a request to talk a bit
for the benefit of THE SCRAP BOOK readers.

And when I saw the man out of character I could not blame him for being a
little ruffled at the persistent press talk about his doing the Lincoln
play because he looked like the famous President. I had gone so far into
this belief myself that I was distinctly amazed when the door opened to
admit a young man, one not much more than thirty, I should say. The face
is long, to be sure, and the frame loose-jointed, but Mr. Chapin's
features blend into rather an attractive composite, and Mr. Lincoln, as
everybody knows, never laid any claims to good looks.

"Why did I elect to do Lincoln, then?" Mr. Chapin went on. "Because it was
the hardest thing of any to do. Any man with the proper amount of ambition
in him likes to tackle and overcome difficulties, and in placing our first
martyred President on the stage I realized to the full how carefully I
must work to keep from falling into pits that would open up on every side
of me. But you want to know how I came to go into this line of work at the
very beginning, don't you?

"Let me see! I should say the foundations were laid when I was a small boy
of ten--out in my native State of Ohio. I used to listen to the
Fourth-of-July orators talk on in their prosy way, in a dull monotone, and
on Sundays the preachers would speak in the same dismal manner.

"'Why don't they convince the people that they are in earnest?' I would
say to myself"--and Mr. Chapin let out his voice in a fashion that made
the rafters of the small room ring. "That's the way I felt about the power
of the voice even at that early era.

"One summer we were having a picnic--I think it was a Sunday-school
affair. Anyhow, there were to be speeches by the boys and girls out in the
woods. I wouldn't rehearse mine. You see, I had made up my mine[TN mind]
to surprise folks. Nobody had ever heard me speak before, and here was the
chance to live up to my own theories.

"What my selection was I cannot just recall. I think it was one of Will
Carleton's descriptive ballads. Anyway, I let myself out on it in a
fashion that made everybody gasp with wonder. And so the thing began. I
knew then that my life-work must