ican Eagle under both wings, delivering himself
of no end of platitudes and soaring aloft into the brilliant realms of
fancy when a man in the audience quietly remarked: "If he goes on
throwing out his ballast, in that way, the Lord knows where he will
land." [Laughter.] If I demonstrate to-night that dryness is a quality
not only of the champagne but of the first speech as well, you may
reflect on that remark as Abraham Lincoln did at City Point after he had
been shaken up the night before in his boat in a storm in Chesapeake
Bay. When he complained of the feeling of gastronomic uncertainty which
we suffer on the water, a young staff officer rushed up to him with a
bottle of champagne and said: "This is the cure for that sort of an
ill." Said the President: "No, young man, I have seen too many fellows
seasick ashore from drinking that very article." [Laughter.]

The story of the life of Abraham Lincoln savors more of romance than
reality. It is more like a fable of the ancient days than a story of a
plain American of the nineteenth century. The singular vicissitudes in
the life of our martyred President surround him with an interest which
attaches to few men in history. He sprang from that class which he
always alluded to as the "plain people," and never attempted to disdain
them. He believed that the government was made for the people, not the
people for the government. He felt that true Republicanism is a
torch--the more it is shaken in the hands of the people the brighter it
will burn. He was transcendently fit to be the first successful
standard-bearer of the progressive, aggressive, invincible Republican
party. [Loud applause.] He might well have said to those who chanced to
sneer at his humble origin what a marshal of France raised from the
ranks said to the haughty nobles of Vienna boasting of their long line
of descent, when they refused to associate with him: "I am an ancestor;
you are only descendants!" [Laughter and cheers.] He was never guilty
of any posing for effect, any attitudinizing in public, any mawkish
sentimentality, any of that puppyism so often bred by power, that
dogmatism which Johnson said was only puppyism grown to maturity.
[Laughter.] He made no claim to knowledge he did not possess. He felt
with Addison that pedantry and learning are like hypocrisy in
religion--the form of knowledge without the power of it. He had nothing
in common with those men of mental malformation who are educated beyo