r the older men who had
personal touch with the great struggle in which Lincoln was the nation's
leader, for the younger men who have grown up in the generation since
the War, and for the children by whom are to be handed down through the
new century the great traditions of the Republic, to secure from the
life and character of our great leader incentive, illumination, and
inspiration to good citizenship, in order that Lincoln and his
fellow-martyrs shall not have died in vain.

It is possible within the limits of this paper simply to touch upon the
chief events and experiences in Lincoln's life. It has been my endeavour
to select those that were the most important in the forming or in the
expression of his character. The term "forming" is, however, not
adequate to indicate the development of a personality like Lincoln's. We
rather think of his sturdy character as having been _forged_ into its
final form through the fiery furnace of fierce struggle, as hammered
out under the blows of difficulties and disasters, and as pressed
beneath the weight of the nation's burdens, until was at last produced
the finely tempered nature of the man we know, the Lincoln of history,
that exquisite combination of sweetness of nature and strength of
character. The type is described in Schiller's Song of the Founding of
the Bell:

Denn, wo das strenge mit dem zarten,
Wo mildes sich und starkes paarten,
Da giebt es einen guten Klang.

There is a tendency to apply the term "miraculous" to the career of
every hero, and in a sense such description is, of course, true. The
life of every man, however restricted its range, is something of a
miracle; but the course of a single life, like that of humanity, is
assuredly based on a development that proceeds from a series of
causations. Holmes says that the education of a man begins two centuries
before his birth. We may recall in this connection that Lincoln came of
good stock. It is true that his parents belonged to the class of poor
whites; but the Lincoln family can be traced from an eastern county of
England (we might hope for the purpose of genealogical harmony that the
county was Lincolnshire) to Hingham in Massachusetts, and by way of
Pennsylvania and Virginia to Kentucky. The grandfather of our Abraham
was killed, while working in his field on the Kentucky farm, by
predatory Indians shooting from the cover of the dense forest. Abraham's
father, Thomas, at that time a boy, was w