hem worth the listening of a people
who were making history; something brilliant, eloquent, strong. The
melancholy gaze glittered with a grim smile. He--Abraham Lincoln--the
lad bred in a cabin, tutored in rough schools here and there, fighting
for, snatching at crumbs of learning that fell from rich tables,
struggling to a hard knowledge which well knew its own limitations--it
was he of whom this was expected. He glanced across the car. Edward
Everett sat there, the orator of the following day, the finished
gentleman, the careful student, the heir of traditions of learning
and breeding, of scholarly instincts and resources. The self-made
President gazed at him wistfully. From him the people might expect and
would get a balanced and polished oration. For that end he had been
born, and inheritance and opportunity and inclination had worked
together for that end's perfection. While Lincoln had wrested from a
scanty schooling a command of English clear and forcible always,
but, he feared, rough-hewn, lacking, he feared, in finish and in
breadth--of what use was it for such a one to try to fashion a speech
fit to take a place by the side of Everett's silver sentences? He
sighed. Yet the people had a right to the best he could give, and he
would give them his best; at least he could see to it that the words
were real and were short; at least he would not, so, exhaust their
patience. And the work might as well be done now in the leisure of the
journey. He put a hand, big, powerful, labor-knotted, into first one
sagging pocket and then another, in search of a pencil, and drew out
one broken across the end. He glanced about inquiringly--there was
nothing to write upon. Across the car the Secretary of State had just
opened a package of books and their wrapping of brown paper lay on
the floor, torn carelessly in a zigzag. The President stretched a long
arm.

"Mr. Seward, may I have this to do a little writing?" he asked, and
the Secretary protested, insisting on finding better material.

But Lincoln, with few words, had his way, and soon the untidy stump
of a pencil was at work and the great head, the deep-lined face, bent
over Seward's bit of brown paper, the whole man absorbed in his task.

Earnestly, with that "capacity for taking infinite pains" which
has been defined as genius, he labored as the hours flew, building
together close-fitted word on word, sentence on sentence. As the
sculptor must dream the statue prisoned in