e grandstand myself hereafter and there will not be so much of me
but I shall have quite a shuck on my soul for all that. I've done a lot
of thinking since I have been lying on my back with nothing else to do.
When your body gets kind of turned over in the ditch it's wonderful how
your mind begins to hustle around the place. Until this thing happened my
intellect was nothing more than a vague rumor. I had heard of it, now and
then, in college, and I had hoped that it would look me up some time and
ask what it could do for me, but it didn't. These days I would scarcely
believe that I have a body, the poor thing being upon the jacks in this
big machine shop, but my small intellect is hopping all over the earth
and back again and watching every move of these high-toned mechanics with
their shiny tools and white aprons. My mind and I have kind of got
acquainted with each other and I'm getting attached to it. It is quite an
energetic, promising young mind and I don't know but I'll try to make a
permanent place for it in my business.

I've been thinking of our Democracy and of my coming over here to be
chucked into this big jack pot as if my life were a small coin; of all
the dear old days of the past I have thought and chiefly how the
wonderful story of your life has been woven into mine--threads of wisdom
and adventure and humor and romance. I like to unravel it and look at the
colors. Lincoln is the strongest, longest thread in the fabric. Often I
think of your description of the great, tender hands that lifted you to
his shoulder when you were a boy, of the droll and kindly things that he
said to you. I have laughed and cried recalling those hours of yours with
Jack Kelso and Dr. John Allen and the rude young giant Abe, of which I
have heard you tell so often as we sat in the firelight of a winter
evening. Best of all I remember the light of your own wisdom as it glowed
upon the story; how you found in Lincoln's words a prophecy of the great
struggle that has come. Since I have been steering my imagination on its
swift, long flights into the past I have been able to recall the very
words you used: "Lincoln said that a house divided against itself must
fall--that our nation could not endure part slave and part free, and it
was true. Since then the world has grown incredibly small. The peoples of
the earth have been drawn into one house and the affairs of each are the
concern of all. With a vain, boastful and unscrupulous deg