a M.
Tarbell's Life of Abraham Lincoln. For the rare and interesting portrait
entitled The Last Phase of Lincoln acknowledgment is made to Robert
Bruce, Esquire, Clinton, Oneida County, New York. This photograph was
taken by Alexander Gardner, April 9, 1865, the glass plate of which is
now in Mr. Bruce's collection.

I. THE CHILD OF THE FOREST

Of first importance in the making of the American people is that great
forest which once extended its mysterious labyrinth from tide-water to
the prairies when the earliest colonists entered warily its sea-worn
edges a portion of the European race came again under a spell it had
forgotten centuries before, the spell of that untamed nature
which created primitive man. All the dim memories that lay deep in
subconsciousness; all the vague shadows hovering at the back of the
civilized mind; the sense of encompassing natural power, the need to
struggle single-handed against it; the danger lurking in the darkness
of the forest; the brilliant treachery of the forest sunshine glinted
through leafy secrecies; the Strange voices in its illimitable murmur;
the ghostly shimmer of its glades at night; the lovely beauty of the
great gold moon; all the thousand wondering dreams that evolved the
elder gods, Pan, Cybele, Thor; all this waked again in the soul of the
Anglo-Saxon penetrating the great forest. And it was intensified by the
way he came,--singly, or with but wife and child, or at best in very
small company, a mere handful. And the surrounding presences were not
only of the spiritual world. Human enemies who were soon as well armed
as he, quicker of foot and eye, more perfectly noiseless in their tread
even than the wild beasts of the shadowy coverts, the ruthless Indians
whom he came to expel, these invisible presences were watching him, in
a fierce silence he knew not whence. Like as not the first signs of that
menace which was everywhere would be the hiss of the Indian arrow, or
the crack of the Indian rifle, and sharp and sudden death.

Under these conditions he learned much and forgot much. His deadly need
made him both more and less individual than he had been, released
him from the dictation of his fellows in daily life while it enforced
relentlessly a uniform method of self-preservation. Though the unseen
world became more and more real, the understanding of it faded. It
became chiefly a matter of emotional perception, scarcely at all a
matter of philosophy. The mora