n solemn awe we pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless
splendor leave it shining on."

In an article entitled "Lincoln's Literary Experiments," by John G.
Nicolay, one of Lincoln's two private secretaries, which was published
in the Century Magazine for April, 1894, are reproduced Lincoln's
notes of one lyceum lecture on "Niagara Falls," and the text of
another on "Discoveries, Inventions and Improvements." These, however,
detract, if anything, from Lincoln's reputation as a writer, for in
choice of subjects and in style of treatment there is seen an almost
discreditable stooping of a man of genius, even in his function of
teacher, to the low popular taste of the West at the time. In the
first lecture Lincoln presented the statistics of the water power of
Niagara Falls for each minute, and led his hearers from this base to
the "contemplation of the vast power the sun is constantly exerting in
the quiet noiseless operation of lifting water up to be rained down
again." Yet at this point he stopped short of his duty as an educator,
for he made no suggestion as to the utilization of this power. He was
satisfied with giving the people what they had come for--the pleasant
excitation of a mental faculty, that of the imagination in its primary
form of wonder at the grandeur of the material universe. In short, he
was acting as a mere entertainer--as so many of our public men do now
at "Chautauquas."

In the second lecture he performed this function in a still more
discreditable manner, by catering to the unworthy demand of his
hearers for obvious and familiar humorous conceptions to grasp which
would cause them no mental exertion. Thus, in speaking of the
inventions of the locomotive and telegraph, already old enough for the
first inevitable similitudes and jocose remarks about them to be
current, he said:

"The iron horse is panting and impatient to carry him (man) everywhere
in no time; and the lightning stands ready harnessed to take and bring
his tidings in a trifle less than no time."

This reveals Lincoln's taste for the characteristic American humor of
exaggeration, which was later to afford him relief from the stress and
strain of his duties as President in the works of "Petroleum V. Nasby"
and "Artemus Ward," writers, however, with a quaint originality which
lifted them and their admirers above the plane of humorous composition
and appreciation of the preceding decade. Indeed, Lincoln developed
his own powe