class="verse00">To make his deed the measure of a man.”

III. A LIFE BUILT AS ONE WOULD HAVE THE NATION

Lincoln’s life may be prized as much in what he did for himself as in what he did for his country, because in the course of our interest they mean the same and become the same. He has shown to every American boy that the right desire, no matter what the circumstances and conditions, will invariably lead along the right way to the successful life, because the successful character is a successful career for a successful humanity. Very clearly one thing is sure, he was wonderfully successful in finding the right thing to do and in finding the right way to do it. That is what humanity wants and such a man is the human ideal. Accordingly, Lincoln’s personal moral development, apart from his historical public career, is an introductory story inspiring an interest for the patriotic study of his statesmanship and the fundamental principles of American life.

Any boy or girl can appreciate the events that entered into the making of Lincoln’s mind and character, but only a student of statesmanship and history can read beyond this and appreciate the almost superhuman task which Lincoln carried through to the extinction of slavery and the preservation of the United States of America.

In that view we are not here writing the biography or history of Lincoln the Statesman, nor of Lincoln the War President, for that work has already been exhaustively and nobly done, but to give the inspiring meaning of his experiences from which arose the boy and man representing above all others the meaning and mission of Americans and America.

CHAPTER II

I. THE PROBLEM OF A WORTHWHILE LIFE

Many of the early events entering into Lincoln’s life seem too trivial to mention in the light of his great services to America. But the human struggle and the moral achievement of a supreme American ideal cannot be appreciated or understood unless the experiences buffeting the way to it, and their circumstances, are known for what they mean to his life. Trivial experiences have very much to do with forming our lives and without them we can neither appreciate nor understand the great events that we believe have given us our career and our destiny.

After being nominated for the presidency of the United States, Lincoln was asked for material from his early life out of which to make a biography.

“Why,” he replied earnestly, as if this was a sacred privacy in his own profound struggle, “it is a great folly to attempt to make anything out of me or my early life. It can all be condensed in a single sentence; and that sentence you will find in Grey’s Elegy: ‘The short and simple annals of the poor.’”

His early friends all agree that he was lazy and idle, but, when we ask closer, they tell us that he spent his time “reading and writing and arguing.” One of his most admiring friends hired him for a certain period and became greatly disgusted at the young man’s preference for idling his time away reading. Another friend one day found him reading, and, with the intention of severely rebuking him, asked what he was doing. “Reading law,” was the reply, without taking his eye from the page.

“Almighty Gosh!” was all the disgusted friend could say. Reading was bad enough waste of time, but to be reading law was beyond all use of words or censure.

So, it merely proves that no one can be understood by the historical student, except as the conditions of mental soil in which the character grew are understood. And especially is it good to learn why the prophet is without honor in his own country, sometimes not even known in his own age. Home people rarely or never understand the unusual worker, because they cannot measure outside of their own experience, and their opinions rarely give much insight into the great laborer born among them, with the great urge, if not the vision, of work and the way.

Lincoln is probably the last Great American who shall ever have to begin his mind-making as anything less than an “heir of all ages.” In Lincoln’s case it seemed as if all else was banished that a mind might build itself up anew to be a fundamental interpretation of American civilization. Like the great Newton, he built his world of principle out of the particulars of original experience, and found that it was the order of the universe. And yet, it might be said that he was a failure in particulars and minor matters, for he thought in terms of general humanity and swung the world into a new consciousness and vision of the moral law.

As Mr. Herndon says, “His origin was in that unknown and sunless bog in which history never made a footprint.” The social origin and development of Christ were far less obscure, humble and lowly in destitute and helpless environment, before the special task of preserving a meaning in the earth as a home for man.

Julia Ward Howe expresses the seriousness attending the possibilities of every new-born soul, as she says, of Lincoln,

It was certainly impossible for a pioneer of the early frontier to imagine how the rich live now, but it is not so hard for any one now to imagine how people lived then, if he will go into the deep woods with only a few simple tools and try to live. It can be done and it will probably be a healthful experience, but not an experience that any person would be expected to try twice.

It is therefore not needful to the setting of our story about the making of a man, for any extended description to be made of the ignorance and the poverty common to those times.

It is enough for us to say with Maurice Thompson in his lines:

Ida Tarbell, after her extensive original researches into the early life of Lincoln, very thoughtfully, says,

“He seems to have had as nearly a universal human sympathy as any one in history. A man could not be so high or so low that Lincoln could not meet him and he could not be so much of a fool, or so many kinds of a fool. He could listen unruffled to cant, to violence, to criticism, just and unjust. Amazingly he absorbed from each man the real thing he had to offer, annexed him by showing him that he understood, and yet gave him somehow a sense of the impossibility of considering him alone, and leaving out the multitudes of other men as convinced and as loyal as he was.”

II. THE LINCOLN BOY OF THE KENTUCKY WOODS

We may well believe that the little Lincoln boy was thrilled with stories of noxious “varmints” and wild “Injuns.” As the fire crackled in the wide earthen fireplace and the sparks flew up the broad dirt chimney, we may well suppose the mystic superstitions of the ignorant times thrilled the young mind with vague fears and often with indescribable dread.

Doubtless he often