verbal stores. Shortly
before his inauguration Lincoln remarked to a clergyman, who had asked
him how he had acquired his remarkable power of "putting things": "I
can say this, that among my earliest recollections I remember how, when
a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a
way I could not understand. I don't think I ever got angry at anything
else in my life. But that always disturbed my temper, and has ever
since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the
neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part
of the night walking up and down, trying to make out what was the exact
meaning of their, to me, dark sayings."

In this first address we find no loose use of words. The character of
the address does not of course admit of ornament or figurative
language, but any subject, however simple, admits of digressions and
mental excursions by the illogical and careless writer. Of these there
is not a trace. Even in the most informal letters and telegrams,
written at post haste and at times under the most extreme pressure of
business and anxiety, Lincoln shows a natural feeling for the
appropriate expression that is found only in the masters of language.

Five years later, in 1837, the interval being represented by only a few
unimportant letters, Lincoln entered upon a period distinguished by
qualities that are not usually associated with his name, a tendency to
fine writing that we should look for earlier than at the age of
twenty-eight. The subject of the address is "The Perpetuation of our
Political Institutions," and the complete text is given in this volume.
Here for once Lincoln speaks of an Alexander, a Buonoparte, a
Washington. The influence of Webster is apparent, in this first purely
oratorical attempt of Lincoln's. It could hardly have been otherwise
at a time when the great Whig orator was making the whole country ring
with his wonderful speeches. It is almost certain, too, that Henry
Clay, to whom Lincoln later referred as _beau ideal_ of an orator, had
a part in moulding this early manner, though this is probably less
apparent here than in the later soberer addresses.

But it must not be supposed that this speech consists merely of what
Hamlet would call "words, words, words." Neither are all the figures
inferior and commonplace. Although it is more ornate than anything in
the later period, the following description of the passin