ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) owed as little to books and to teachers as did any American of eminence. In the wilds of Kentucky and Indiana during his youth there were

very few schools and they were poor and irregular. Lincoln's whole schooling, we are told, did not amount to as much as one year. At the age of seventeen he was compelled to go four miles to attend district school. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were the only branches taught, and the lad's eagerness for knowledge soon helped him to proficiency in these subjects. As soon as he had learned to read understandingly, the vast field of knowledge began to open up to him. For a long time the Bible and Æsop's Fables were the only books in

his possession. He must have known these by heart, for we well know that he himself spoke in figures and parables. The next books to come into his hands were "Robinson Crusoe," a Life of Washington," Pilgrim's Progress," and a history of the United States. Whenever he found a moment from his

work he would take up a book and begin to read, and his considerate mother was so deeply interested in his progress that she would not allow him to be disturbed. Long into the night, by the feeble light of the open fire, he would pore over his books. The pursuit of knowledge became a passion with him. His retentive memory, his power of assimilation, and his ability to go to the bottom of subjects soon gained him a reputation for knowledge and good sense. Ambassador Choate, in an address in London, says on this subject: "Untiring industry, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and an ever-growing desire to rise above his surroundings were early manifestations of his character. . . . Instead of a university training fortune substituted trials, hardships, and struggles as a preparation for his great work." The studious. habits acquired in his early youth remained with him to the day of his death, and never was he better fitted to serve the American people than at the hour of his sacrifice.

His interest in the law dates from his possession of a copy of the statutes of Indiana, which he read and reread with increasing interest. But it was not until a copy of Blackstone came into his hands that he began his serious study of the law. "In this he became wholly engrossed, and began for the first time to avoid the society of men, in order that he might have more time for study."

Such was Lincoln's general education and the foundation which he laid for his work as a lifelong student. What was the special work which fitted him for so high a rank among great orators, for no one may gain such eminence in literature and oratory without some kind of discipline?

Few men ever trained themselves more thoroughly and more severely in the use of the English language. His eagerness for expression was hardly excelled by his thirst for knowledge. He turned everything to account. He meditated on the

thoughts he had gained and immediately expressed them in his own simpler language. When asked by Professor Gulliver of Andover, Massachusetts, how he acquired such control of the English language, he replied: "Well, if I have got any power that way, I will tell you how I suppose I came to get it. You see, when I was a boy over in Indiana all the local politicians used to come to our cabin to discuss politics with my father. I used to sit by and listen to them, but my father would not let me ask many questions, and there were a good many things I did not understand. Well, I'd go up to my room in the attic and sit down or pace back and forth till I made out just what they meant. And then I'd lie awake for hours just putting their ideas into words that the boys around our way could understand." This was the secret of his severe self-discipline in clearness and power of statement, his chief aim in writing and speaking. To avoid verboseness and to be easily understood he studied his own utterances to see wherein he failed or succeeded. This gave him a marvelous power over words in extemporization. The London Spectator says that " no criticism of Lincoln can in any sense be adequate that does not deal with his astonishing power over words, and it is not too much to say of him that he is among the greatest masters of prose ever produced by the English race.”

Lincoln trained himself both in private arguments and in public speeches to express his thoughts so that he might be instantly understood. This gave him power of analysis and the ability to think a subject through to a logical conclusion. When at work in the fields he delighted in "speechifying," as he called it, and would often mount a stump and harangue his fellow workmen, who were ever ready to listen to him. Not infrequently a cluster of trees offered him "dignified and appreciative audience." Speaking on this subject, Hamilton Mabie says:

Countless private debates were carried on at

street corners, in hotel rooms, by the country road, in every place where men met even in the most casual way. In these wayside schools Lincoln practiced the art of putting things, until he became a master in debate, both formal and informal. . . . In a period which accepted the most extravagant rhetoric as the highest kind of eloquence, he was a man of simple, sincere, and beautiful speech . . . free from exaggeration, from high-sounding and bombastic phrase, from the spread-eagleism which was the passion of the time."

When he first went to Springfield he became a member of the Young Men's Lyceum, which often held public debates on political subjects. His style was then flowery and somewhat gaudy in ornament, but by practice he grew in simplicity and logical power and gradually acquired a style of singular felicity and persuasiveness. He was at this time a persistent student of great orations, both British and American, and during his term in Congress he was a careful observer of the methods of the men most highly reputed for their eloquence. Joseph Choate, remarking on the purity and perfection of his style of speaking, says: "The rough backwoodsman who had never seen the inside of a university became in the end, by self-training and the exercise of his own powers of mind, heart, and soul, a master of style; and some of his utterances will rank with the best, the most perfectly adapted to the occasion which produced them." Not only was he a master of style by consistent and unyielding self-discipline, but he possessed in a marked degree the ability to master his materials and gain a firm grasp of the truth. Possessed of a clear vision, an open logical mind, his statement of a case was better than most men's argument. He had the happy faculty of putting aside all extraneous discussion, platitudes, and generalities. In conducting his cases in the courts he would give away so many points as to alarm his friends. But

he would say to the court, "We may be wrong in this, but it is not the gist of the matter anyway." This liberality and disposition toward fair play always told with a jury and usually resulted in the verdict which he asked for.

Another important element in his style was his use of figures, analogies, and stories. His power of comparison was unique. In the making of points which came home to the general mind through his figures and analogies he was not surpassed by any other of our orators. All opponents dreaded his apt comparisons, his novel way of putting things, his terseness and force of expression. And not the least effective of his weapons were his native wit, his quaint humor, and his wonderful gift as a story-teller. "I am not simply a storyteller," he once said, "but story-telling as an emollient saves me much friction and distress." His anecdotes, always pertinent, were used to enforce his points, to quicken the minds of his audience, and sometimes to divert a curious questioner. Ambassadors and statesmen were often quite shocked to have the President of the United States interrupt them with a story of a man out in old Sangamon County, Illinois. There is no doubt that he derived great power from the aptness of these stories. Some one has said that "his illustrations were romance and pathos, fun and logic, all welded together." His bubbling humor, which played unceasing accompaniment to his logic, smoothed the way to conviction and won for him many a forensic contest. "Yet," says Carl Schurz, "his greatest charm consisted in the power of his individuality. That charm did not, in the ordinary way, appeal to the ear or the eye. . . He commanded none of the outward graces of oratory as they are commonly understood. His charm was of a different kind. It flowed from the rare depth and genuineness of his convictions, and his sympathy, the strongest element in his nature."