nd I can see for ages and
ages the face of Lincoln on books, on coins, on monuments; until some
day his face will be the symbol of the United States of America, when
the United States of America has rotted into the manure piles of history
with Tyre and Babylon, as it will if it doesn't turn back and be what
Lincoln was: a man who worked and thought, and whose idea was to have a
free field, just laws, and a democracy where to make a man and not make
a dollar is the first consideration."

And then Mr. Miller said: "Yes, this is a great monument and Lincoln was
a great man. You see when all the sap-heads and poets down in New
England and all over was hollerin' for nigger equality and to give the
nigger a vote and to marry him, and give him the same right as anybody,
Lincoln just kept cool; and he didn't even emancipate the nigger until
he had to in order to win the war. It was to win the war, understand. He
wasn't swept off his feet by anybody, orators or poets or
yawpers--nobody. But you'll see when you grow up what the difference is
between not havin' the nigger for a slave and allowin' him to vote and
marry you; and you'll see that what Lincoln said when he went over the
country debatin' with Douglas, speakin' at Havana, and right here in
Springfield and at Petersburg, too, he said to the last and acted on to
the last. It was after the war and after Lincoln was dead that these
here snifflers and scalawags got into power and pushed it over until
they gave the nigger the vote and all that. And if this country goes to
pieces because the good breeds have been killed off and die off, and the
country is run by the riff-raff, then Lincoln, say five hundred years
from now, will stand greater than he is to-day, unless the world can
then see that the nigger should have been kept a slave, so as to let
the wise and the intelligent have time to think better and work better
for the good of the country. For, boys, you can put it down that a
country ain't good that is run on the principle of countin' noses, and
lettin' everybody have a say just because he walks on two legs and can
talk instead of barkin' or waggin' his tail." And so Mr. Miller went on.

Then Mr. Miller said damn, or that something could be "damned." And
Mitch says, "Pa, did you know you swore?" And Mr. Miller says: "I
shouldn't have, and don't you follow my example. But sometimes I get so
mad about the country."

So we had seen the monument and walked away; and when