Tributes to Abraham Lincoln . g a stuffed-shirtpart. He was being president of the United States in a time of nationalperil and crisis and he was doing it in the way he believed it ougiit tobe done. He had his own conceptions of truth and justice, of the meaning of ourdemocracy, of the needs of the nation. These he followed, letting thebureaucrats on the one hand and the fanatical asitators on the otherclamor as they pleased. And when they came to him to point out theerror of his ways he told them funny stories. A gaunt ungainly figure with a homely care-creased face, wearing hisloose clothes
Tributes to Abraham Lincoln . g a stuffed-shirtpart. He was being president of the United States in a time of nationalperil and crisis and he was doing it in the way he believed it ougiit tobe done. He had his own conceptions of truth and justice, of the meaning of ourdemocracy, of the needs of the nation. These he followed, letting thebureaucrats on the one hand and the fanatical asitators on the otherclamor as they pleased. And when they came to him to point out theerror of his ways he told them funny stories. A gaunt ungainly figure with a homely care-creased face, wearing hisloose clothes like a country store-keeper, and using words like one whorelished the juice in them, a man of the people who always remained oneof the people even when isolated in the lonely eminence of the highest andmost burdensome office in the nation, a man so unique, so original that ittook a century for the world to grasp the full measure of his greatness, sounconventional that everything he said and did was characteristic ofbimtelL. r. THERE is a long letter on my desk from ayoung man. Something I have writtenand that has been published has upsethim. He is one of the young men you meeteverywhere now: he has a burning desire to remake life, the whole social scheme. He is alittle fretful and angry at me because I likethe Oak Hills, the smaller scenes; because Ihave doubts about the ends to be achieved bytr5dng to be a big thinker, a mover of massesof men. He scolds at me. I had somewhere saidsomething about the necessity nowadays ofstaying put. In saying that, I had in mindstaying closer home in our thoughts and feel-ings. The big world outside now is so filledwith confusion. It seemed to me that our onlyhope, in the present muddle, was to try think-ing small. It must be that the young man who haswritten the letter to me feels that he hassomething great to give to the world. In hisletter he speaks of the rapidity with whichmen now move from place to place. I had, inwhat I had written, spo
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