our life and in our system of government. How
eloquent this little house within this shrine is of the vigor of
democracy! There is nowhere in the land any home so remote, so humble,
that it may not contain the power of mind and heart and conscience to
which nations yield and history submits its processes. Nature pays no
tribute to aristocracy, subscribes to no creed of caste, renders fealty
to no monarch or master of any name or kind. Genius is no snob. It does
not run after titles or seek by preference the high circles of society.
It affects humble company as well as great. It pays no special tribute
to universities or learned societies or conventional standards of
greatness, but serenely chooses its own comrades, its own haunts, its
own cradle even, and its own life of adventure and of training. Here is
proof of it. This little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of
men, a man of singular, delightful, vital genius who presently emerged
upon the great stage of the nation's history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but
dominant and majestic, a natural ruler of men, himself inevitably the
central figure of the great plot. No man can explain this, but every man
can see how it demonstrates the vigor of democracy, where every door is
open, in every hamlet and countryside, in city and wilderness alike,
for the ruler to emerge when he will and claim his leadership in the
free life. Such are the authentic proofs of the validity and vitality of
democracy.

Here, no less, hides the mystery of democracy. Who shall guess this
secret of nature and providence and a free polity? Whatever the vigor
and vitality of the stock from which he sprang, its mere vigor and
soundness do not explain where this man got his great heart that seemed
to comprehend all mankind in its catholic and benignant sympathy, the
mind that sat enthroned behind those brooding, melancholy eyes, whose
vision swept many an horizon which those about him dreamed not of,--that
mind that comprehended what it had never seen, and understood the
language of affairs with the ready ease of one to the manner born,--or
that nature which seemed in its varied richness to be the familiar of
men of every way of life. This is the sacred mystery of democracy, that
its richest fruits spring up out of soils which no man has prepared and
in circumstances amidst which they are the least expected. This is a
place alike of mystery and of reassurance.

It is likely that in a society ordered