s difficult time.
Yet, in the briefest instant that can be measured, an ignoble tippler
had dared to cut the life-thread from which depended no small portion of
the destinies of millions of people. How the history of this nation
might have been changed, had Mr. Lincoln survived to bear his
influential part in reconstructing and reuniting the shattered country,
no man can tell. Many have indulged in the idle speculation, though to
do so is but to waste time. The life which he had already lived gives
food enough for reflection and for study without trying to evolve out of
arbitrary fancy the further things which might have been attempted by
him, which might have been of wise or of visionary conception, might
have brilliantly succeeded or sadly failed.

It is only forty years since Abraham Lincoln became of much note in the
world, yet in that brief time he has been the subject of more varied
discussion than has been expended upon any other historical character,
save, perhaps, Napoleon; and the kind of discussion which has been
called forth by Lincoln is not really to be likened to that which has
taken place concerning Napoleon or concerning any other person
whomsoever. The great men of the various eras and nations are
comprehensible, at least upon broad lines. The traits to which each owes
his peculiar power can be pretty well agreed upon; the capacity of each
can be tolerably well expressed in a formula; each can be intelligibly
described in fairly distinct phrases; and whether this be in the spirit
of admiration or of condemnation will, in all cases which admit of
doubt, be largely a question of the personal sympathies of the observer.
But Lincoln stands apart in striking solitude,--an enigma to all men.
The world eagerly asks of each person who endeavors to write or speak of
him: What illumination have you for us? Have you solved the mystery? Can
you explain this man? The task has been essayed many times; it will be
essayed many times more; it never has been, and probably it never will
be entirely achieved. Each biographer, each writer or speaker, makes his
little contribution to the study, and must be content to regard it
merely as a contribution. For myself, having drawn the picture of the
man as I see him, though knowing well that I am far from seeing him all,
and still farther from seeing inwardly through him, yet I know that I
cannot help it by additional comments. Very much more than is the case
with other men, Li