L

As God appeared to Solomon and Joseph in dreams to urge them to make
wise choices for the power of great usefulness, so it would appear
that in their waking dreams the Almighty appeared to such
history-making souls as Paul and Constantine, Alfred the Great,
Washington, and Lincoln. It was the commonest kind of a life this
young Lincoln was living on the frontier of civilization, but out of
that commonest kind of living came the uncommonest kind of character
of these modern years, the sublimest liberative power in the history
of freedom. Lincoln felt there, as a great awkward boy, that God and
history had something for him to do. He dreamed his destiny. He chose
to champion the cause of the oppressed. He vowed that when the chance
came he would deal slavery a hard blow. When he came to his high
office, he came with a character which had been fitting itself for its
grave responsibilities. He had been making wise choices on the great
questions of human rights, of national union, of constitutional
freedom, of universal brotherhood.

FROM "REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN"[28]

BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

Strange mingling of mirth and tears, of the tragic and grotesque, of
cap and crown, of Socrates and Rabelais, of AEsop and Marcus Aurelius,
of all that is gentle and just, humorous and honest, merciful, wise,
laughable, lovable and divine, and all consecrated to the use of man;
while through all, and over all, an overwhelming sense of obligation,
of chivalric loyalty to truth, and upon all the shadow of the tragic
end.

Nearly all the great historic characters are impossible monsters,
disproportioned by flattery, or by calumny deformed. We know nothing
of their peculiarities, or nothing but their peculiarities. About the
roots of these oaks there clings none of the earth of humanity.
Washington is now only a steel engraving. About the real man who lived
and loved and hated and schemed we know but little. The glass through
which we look at him is of such high magnifying power that the
features are exceedingly indistinct. Hundreds of people are now
engaged in smoothing out the lines of Lincoln's face--forcing all
features to the common mold--so that he may be known, not as he really
was, but, according to their poor standard, as he should have been.

Lincoln was not a type. He stands alone--no ancestors, no fellows, and
no successors. He had the advantage of living in a new country, of
social equality, of personal fr