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Show Abraham Lincoln THE new book, "In the Valley Of the Shad-dows," Shad-dows," is filled with reminiscences of the great men that stalked before the people in Illinois sixty years ago, such men as Fremont, General Sherman, General Lyon, Douglas, and others. They are brought in in conversations, but the great charm of ho book is the vivid portrayal of life in that region when the log hut was the rule. In the course of the book he gives a little picture of Mr. Lincoln as he ap peared in the great debate with Douglas at Ogden. A singular thing is that these descriptions of Mr. Lincoln never came in his' day, and yet certainly this is the truthful impression which he gave tho writer of the book, because the book has every appearance of truthfulness, and reveals a splendid splen-did memory of what happened in the long ago under the writer's eye. One can see the sunlight sun-light shining through the rule window upon the rag carpet on the floor, he can hear the voices of the birds as they sang on tho prairie before the prairie was broken, and when mingling with the song of the birds there was the far-off hoot of the owl, and 'the knowledge that only a little ways from the cabin tho wild beast was lying In wait for victims. The description of Mi. Lincoln's speaking is as follows: "Abraham Lincoln rose from his seat, stretched his long bony limbs upward as if to get them into working order, and stood like some solitary pine on a lonely summit, very tall, very dark, very gaunt, and very rugged, his swarthy features stamped with a sad serenity, and the instant he began to speak the ungainly mouth lost its heaviness, the half-listless eyes attained at-tained a wondrous power, and the people stood bewildered and breathless under the natural magic of the strangest, most original personality known to the English-speaking world since Robert Ro-bert Burns. There were moments when he seemed all legs and feet, and again he appeared ap-peared all head and neck yet every look of the deep-set eyes, every movement of the prominent jaw, every wave of the hard-gripping hand, produced pro-duced an impression, and before he had spoken twenty minutes the conviction took possession of thousands that here was the prophetic man of the present and the political savior of the future." That speech is well known to many readers, and save for the irresistible logic of it, there is nothing remarkable about it. It was not tho speech that impressed the hearers, it was the man, and that impression was given to thousands of others. They never could describe it except by saying that Mr. Lincoln was great. The trouble trou-ble is that the awkward man, while he was talking, talk-ing, revealed -to shrewd eyes a depth greater than that expressed by his words. He never did come to himself fully until under the experience and the anxiety of the first years of his presidency, and among the mighty events with which he was surrounded, at last his soul found full expression. expres-sion. It was not until that speech was delivered that anybody knew just how great Abraham Lincoln Lin-coln was, but since that speech when anyone has doubted his essential greatness and charged his fame to the tragedy of his death, all that i.s needed Is to present that speech to such a one and ask him to add to it or take away from it one word to give it more power, and he stands dumb. It was very much the same way with General E. D. Baker. He was a wonderful orator; he could sway audiences even a? a master musician musi-cian touches the keys and stops of an organ, and yet he always seemed greater than anything he said until he was elected senator, and then made major general in the army, and after having hav-ing been out one morning drilling his regiment, he went at noon to the senate, went into a cloak room, dropped upon a lounge, still dressed in his full uniform, and fell asleep. Charles Summer, at that time was jealous of any new man who seemed to have a reputation as a speaker and as a statesman, and he had been heard to say that while Baker1 could prepare a speech and deliver it with wonderful power, he would probably prob-ably fall in the senate when called upon suddenly to speak on some high theme. Mr. Breckenrldge on that day mad his speech giving his reasons for resigning- his place in the Senate and going home to his native state to help the southern Confederacy. It was a prepared speech, as classic as it was bitter, and as the speaker progressed the question among the Republican senators was, who would answer. At last the name of Baker was mentioned, and a couple of gentlemen, went to the cloak room, woke him up, told him Breckenrldge Brecken-rldge was making a most Impressive and terrific speech, and asked him if he would reply. He said he would. He walked into the senate chamber, cham-ber, still in his uniform, with his sword at his side and heard the last fifteen minutes of Brecken-' Brecken-' ridge's speech, in which he summed up the sub stance of what he had said and gave the reasons rea-sons for what he proposed to do. When he ceased, Baker took the floor and then for an hour he held that senate spellbound, and when he finally came to the sneering question of Breckenrldge, which in substance was, where will you get your soldiers to invade and wreck the south, Baker repeated his words and then said it was easy; it would only be necessary to stamp one's foot and call upon those who Were willing to die for their country, to have myriads spring as it were from the ground in the Republic's defense. When he stamped his foot the scabbord of his sword rang on the marble floor, and such a thrill went through the hearts of the senators as they never felt before. Tlie conclusion is that everywhere around us we see men who are greater thaa they seem to be. They lack the opportunity to have their greatness called up. When the war broke out Grant and Sherman were middle-aged men, their lives, although they were educated at West Point, had been practically failures. One was a clerk in a tannery, the other had charge of a little street railroad in St. Louis. The was gave them their opportunity, and they gravitated to the front just as naturally as does the blood-horse when he is making a long race against a mustang. mus-tang. Those who die "with all their sweetness in them," are more numerous than we think. |
