Show american history Is mard tender sentiments have had little to do with the great events that have marked the country a Up building our history is hard and masculine colored with few purple lights too little related to our senti menta and deeper passions when older peoples have paused as we did then they have looked upon far dit ferent scenes fairer companies have stood about more stately figures of triumph or of tragedy than that amer lea and the world now gazed upon the common chamber the gaunt pale president the strong bearded boua delors at his bedside this was unlike scenes which european peoples have fixed in their memories charles I 1 and mary stuart on the r scaffolds the barons and the king at runnymede maria theresa appealing to the no bles of H maary to take up their swords for her child marie antoinette and mirabeau and many another pa geant of human love and sacrifice are treasured up by other peoples as we have treasured up this crude gunlack eyed martyrdom even the great personality ot un coin now potent in so many individual lives intimate and familiar of so many of our hidden moods was not yet fully revealed to his fellows it was the emancipator only that had fallen the leader and shepherd of men out at least his experience was lim cited as theirs was dying in the midst of multitudes master of armies and of navies he was still of the frontier as indeed all our american life was still in a sense only the frontier and western fringe of european life true lincoln also leads our thoughts back to the princes whose peer he was but a can pass from his deathbed with no irreverence no sense of shock or change to look out in the plain light of day upon the whole wide field of work and strife and progress which was always in his thought and glimpse the attitude and state of the republic when his sum mons passed e an angelus across the continent william garrott brown in the atlantic |