American, born with apparently "no chance" for leaving his imprint on the world. His father was a shiftless carpenter-farmer, who could not read or write. Abe was brought up in a rude log cabin in the then wilderness of Spencer County, Indiana; he endured many hardships and knew only the primitive manners, conversations and ambitions of sparsely settled, back-woods communities. How typical of the spirit of mental preparedness for usefulness in life is the picture of the ungainly Lincoln youth sprawling on the cabin floor, with the log fire illuminating the pages of his book and saying, "I will study and prepare myself and then some day my chance will come." When nineteen years of age Lincoln was a hired hand on a flat boat running to New Orleans. When twenty-two he operated a little country store and began to study law. A year later he was defeated as a candidate for the Legislature, and his country store failed. In 1833 he did odd jobs and had to struggle hard to "procure bread to keep body and soul together." Lincoln had no "opportunity" offered to him on a silver platter by the Goddess Fate, but this simple, tender-hearted, patient, cheery, unaffected man, logical, analytical and tolerant, with a wonderful judicial mind, rose under times of great stress to be the "man of the hour," and in his death of martyrdom was mourned as America's greatest citizen. Lincoln was never academically wise but he had wonderful intuitive wisdom. He said that his "education was picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity." His wisdom was that of the spirit of life— it flowed from the universal mind and could not be

It

measured by worldly pedagogical standards. bred conviction, decision, action and with "Malice toward none; with charity for all," he suffered as did the intuitive God-like Christ eighteen centuries before him.

Wisdom, void of the Cosmic Spirit of the universe, is impossible; knowledge is the result of worldly authority presented and absorbed in some form or other, but wisdom is of the soul and prompts acts which contribute to the true benefit and advance of mankind toward the Cosmic Goal of perfection. Kipling tells us of "the naked soul of Tomlinson" before the gate "where Peter holds the keys," when commanded to tell of the "good that he had done for the sake of men:"

"This I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to

me

And this I have thought that another man thought of a prince in Moscovy."

And Peter twirled his jangling keys in weariness and wrath, "Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said, "and

the tale is yet to run;

By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer— what ha' ye done?”

Emerson has said, "Talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, 'Is he rich?' 'Has he this or that faculty?' 'Is he of the establishment?' but, 'Is he anybody?' 'Does he stand for something?'' Lincoln stood for something; he was elected to the Presidency because of his character, his solid worth; he won success honestly, but what is far greater, he used it nobly.

M

IX

ANY of the world's greatest inventions have been accredited to accidents; but is it accidental that a natural occurrence assumes special significance to a mind that has been developed by hard, persistent work to reason and seek to explain the phenomena of nature? It is said that the idea of gravitation came to Newton because an apple fell on his head. Perhaps. But apples had been falling ever since there were apple trees, and had probably been falling on men's heads, or about them, ever since men had acquired the habit of walking or sitting under apple trees. The idea of gravitation came to Newton's mind not so much from the knock on his head from the falling apple, as from the keenly trained observation, and ability to see beyond the fact to its cause and effect. This power of observation was not due to any overtraining of the senses, but rather to a finely developed connecting system between the senses and the judgment seat, that region where intelligence dwells.

The idea of the steam engine is said to have occurred to Watt while watching a tea-kettle simmering on the fire, but how many hundreds of thousands of men before him had seen steam coming out of kettles? The idea of the pendulum for regulating time occurred to Galileo from observing a

swinging lantern in the cathedral at Pisa, but great numbers of other people had seen other lanterns, or the identical same lantern, swinging for ages past. In all these cases, certain minds had been prepared to note the slight unusual occurrence and carry a mental investigation of the matter forward, until a law was discovered and an idea or initial notion made complete.

Most of the great discoveries of the world have resulted from the attentive observation and intelligent consideration of little things. We are told that the art of printing owes its origin to rude impressions from the carved bark of beech trees, made to amuse little children. Galileo conceived the idea of the telescope by observing the children of a Dutch spectacle-maker at play, placing glasses before each other and looking through the set at some distant object. Galvani's observance of the twitching of a frog's leg, when in proximity to certain metals, led to elaborate research, which culminated in the production of the electric telegraph. Young's discovery of the diffraction of light is traceable to his observation of the colors of soap bubbles which a child blew from a clay pipe. Samuel Brown said that the idea of a suspension bridge was suggested to him by observing a spider's web covered with dew, thrown across his garden path.

A young boy discovered a method of automatically operating the valves of a steam engine in order to gratify his desire for more time to play. The primitive steam engine, as Newcomen conceived it, required the presence of a person exclusively employed to manipulate the taps by which the steam

was let into the cylinder and by which the cold spray was injected to condense the steam. The boy, tending one of these engines, and desiring to earn his wages and at the same time be released from a sort of monotonous occupation, conceived the idea of tying the handles of the taps by cords to the beam of the engine, thus harnessing up the engine to work itself by opening and closing the taps.

Many wonderful discoveries have been made when investigators were engaged in endeavoring to discover other believedly desirable things. In their search for gold, the old alchemists discovered, among other things, gunpowder, china, medicines, and many laws of nature. Goethe has also pointed out that many now world-famous men have been like Saul, who found a kingdom while looking for his father's asses.

Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, went to Savannah, Georgia, to secure a position as school teacher, but meeting Mr. Greene, the owner of a large plantation and becoming interested in the need of a machine to separate the short staple upland cotton from its small black seeds, he invented with Yankee ingenuity, his famous saw-gin, which tore out the seeds with its iron teeth and did fifty men's work per day; and under King Cotton, the South commenced a new era of wealth, vigor and prosperity. No invention has more profoundly influenced American industrial, economic and social history than that of young Whitney, who could not find the job he wanted as school teacher.

Michael Angelo saw a man modeling in clay in the gardens of Lorenzo and became fired with en