ere together, and when you get to
be old men, you'll see that you were born and lived in the beginning of
the republic. How will it look hereafter? Do you want to know--take a
history and look at it now. Let's see! Washington had just been dead ten
years when Lincoln was born; Lincoln had been dead eleven years when you
were born. When Lincoln was born, the Government had been founded just
twenty-three years, was just a little more than of age. It wasn't but
just eighty years old when Lincoln became president. Why, these figures
are nothing. Think about it. When did Juvenal live? About 42 A.D. When
did Virgil and Horace live, and Caesar and Augustus and Domitian? What
does forty years here or there mean when you're lookin' back over
hundreds of years or a thousand? And so I say, you boys were born in the
beginning of the republic, not a hundred years after it was started, and
if either of you ever get your names into the history, there it will be
beside Lincoln, and not far from Washington--for you were born ten years
after Lincoln died and not a hundred after Washington. Well, there you
are. You're young and the republic is young; and the chance is before
you to do for the country and help out, for we're havin' bad times now,
and they'll be worse. After every war, times is bad, and we're goin' to
have other wars and worse'n ever."

Then Mr. Miller said: "There's two kinds of men--at least two. One that
thinks and one that acts; or one that tells people what to do, and
others that listen and do it, or else have thought it out first
themselves, and do it. Well, look at Lincoln up there. Here he was over
at Old Salem running a store, surveyin'; then in politics a little, then
a lawyer; but mostly for twenty years he was thinkin' about the state of
the country, slavery and things; and he thought it all out. Then they
elected him president, and he acted out what he thought."

"Well, don't you suppose he could have got rich practicing law or
tradin' in land? He was a good lawyer--none better! Why didn't he get
fees and save and buy land during the twenty years he practiced law?
Because his mind was set on the country, on how to make the country
better, on being a shepherd of the people. The man who thinks of money
all the time, thinks of himself; and the man who thinks of the country
and wants to help it is thinking of what can be done for people and how
the country can find treasure in having better people, and better laws,