ersonality that lives in the girl's presence then
his influence begins to count.

It is not the facts about Abraham Lincoln that engender heroism. The
facts may be presented in such a way as to hold but passing interest. I
have heard the life and times of Abraham Lincoln taught that way. But I
have seen Abraham Lincoln presented to a class of foreign girls by one
to whom he had become a friend as real and genuine as if he stood by her
side. As I listened _I_ saw Abraham Lincoln. I felt the kindness and
patience of his great soul, the honest purpose and the fine courage of
his life. The facts were there in that lesson but more than the facts
were there. _He_ was there. At the close of the lesson that teacher
looking into the faces of the girls who represented nearly every land
across the sea said to them, "What do you think of him?" One girl
responded eagerly "I think he was _grand_!" and a dark-haired intense
girl, her black eyes glowing, rose and said with an earnestness and
fervor I can _never_ forget, "I _love_ him!" "You shall hear more
tomorrow," said the teacher, and they looked as if it were hard to wait.

A careful observation of the ways of presenting great men of history and
great characters in literature to young people will convince one beyond
doubt that the girl may store the _facts_ in the memory for a time, but
if the living personality is presented _it_ will remain to mold and
guide and influence the life. The teacher's greatest power is never in
what she teaches but in what is revealed to the individual through her
teaching. The mind hungers for facts, searches for facts and wearies of
facts. It follows personality.

When Richard Watson Gilder tried to voice the plea of the young doubter,
puzzled, perplexed and suffering from the great array of apparently
conflicting facts and most of all from his own failure to win out over
the temptations that swept over him he said:

"Thou Christ, my soul is hurt and bruised!
With words the scholars wear me out;
My brain o'erwearied and confused,
Thee, myself and all, I doubt.
And must I back to darkness go
Because I cannot say a creed?
I know not what I think! I know
Only that _Thou_ art what I need."

The fact is not enough. John Kendrick Bangs says it forcibly--

"A mere acceptance of the fact of love of God above,
Of all the vast omnipotence of Him our Maker and Defence
Is not believing."

Slowly we are getting back to the