even at the
bidding of duty or policy, refuse the prayer of age or helplessness in
distress. Children instinctively loved him; they never found his
rugged features ugly; his sympathies were quick and seemingly
unlimited. He was absolutely without prejudice of class or condition.
Frederick Douglass says he was the only man of distinction he ever met
who never reminded him, by word or manner, of his color; he was as
just and generous to the rich and well-born as to the poor and
humble--a thing rare among politicians. He was tolerant even of evil:
tho no man can ever have lived with a loftier scorn of meanness and
selfishness, he yet recognized their existence and counted with them.
He said one day, with a flash of cynical wisdom worthy of a La
Rochefoucauld, that honest statesmanship was the employment of
individual meanness for the public good. He never asked perfection of
any one; he did not even insist, for others, upon the high standards
he set up for himself. At a time before the word was invented he was
the first of opportunists. With the fire of a reformer and a martyr in
his heart, he yet proceeded by the ways of cautious and practical
statecraft. He always worked with things as they were, while never
relinquishing the desire and effort to make them better. To a hope
which saw the delectable mountains of absolute justice and peace in
the future, to a faith that God in his own time would give to all men
the things convenient to them, he added a charity which embraced in
its deep bosom all the good and the bad, all the virtues and the
infirmities of men, and a patience like that of nature, which in its
vast and fruitful activity knows neither haste nor rest.

A character like this is among the precious heirlooms of the
republic; and by a special good fortune every part of the country has
an equal claim and pride in it. Lincoln's blood came from the veins of
New England emigrants, of Middle State Quakers, of Virginia planters,
of Kentucky pioneers; he himself was one of the men who grew up with
the earliest growth of the great West. Every jewel of his mind or his
conduct sheds radiance on each portion of the nation. The marvelous
symmetry and balance of his intellect and character may have owed
something to this varied environment of his race, and they may fitly
typify the variety and solidity of the republic. It may not be
unreasonable to hope that his name and his renown may be forever a
bond of union to the count