The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-04-10
SPIRIT or THE PRESS.
EDITORIAL OPINIONS OF THE LEADING JOURNALS
UPON CURRENT ToPIos-coMPILED EVERY
DAY FOR THE EVENING TELEGRAPH.
ANOTHER LINCOLN ROMANCE.

From the NJ Y. Tribune.
We find a very absurd story in place
where nobody clothed in his right mind
would ever look for it-on the first page of
Mr.. Tilton's Golden Age. It states that a
friend of Mr.. Lincolns, who had been absent
in Europe during the first year of his admin
istration when all of Lincolns friends who
were worth killing we're at home) returned to
the land of the free only to find the President
girded about by men who poured into his In.
nocent ears day and night the most frigh6ul
falsehoods about the state OF the country,
which the 0o6em0uche President swallowed
and digested with unsuspecting candor. This
wise and upright patriot revealed to the aston
ished Ilinoisan the dense and Opaque igno-
rance in which his keepers we're holding him,
and in reply to his piteous inquiry, "What
shall do to be saved ?" suggested o simple
and sufficient remedy.
The candid friend who had rescued the
President from his moral prison-house had
other matters of more Importance than the
salvation of the country occupying his mind,
and so could not continue his enlightening
work But he had anotker candid friend, to
whom he offered the thorny position of
truth-teller in ordinary to his Excellency.
The honest magistrate, still in a sweat of
mortal terror over the awful peril that had
been revealed to him, abjectly accepted the
ministrations of this rugged confessor, and
E'the bargain was faithfully carried out, great
ly to Mr.. Lincoln's credit and benefit" If
the unknown geniuses who write the Dime
Novels neglect this plot, there is no use trying
to help such people.
The story lacks but one thing: we pine to
know the obscure patriot to whom we owe the
rescue of Lincoln from the sinister con-
spiracy which came so near destroying him in
his green and salad days of government.
The editor certainly got the story from the
Candid Patriot himself, and should not have
xuffb blaII Ai frn,, f6a o1o Ofo
waiting world. He is too wise and useful,
too large and juiceful Gas the New England
poet said of the Rhode Island Greenings), to
remain in private life or to shed his corusoa-
tions around the backstairs of newspaper
offices. He should be in Washington to-day,
performing for General Grant the inestimable
services he rendered to his great and good
predecessor.
There is wonderful family likeness about
all this class of Lincoln anecdotes. The man
who tells them usually steadfastly believes
them. He first begins by thinking what he
would have said if he had seen the President.
He repeats this to the partner of his bosom,
and, encouraged by her loyal approval, he
cautiously recounts an imaginary interview
to the loungers around his country post
Office. He becomes a local lion by virtue of
his story, and at the tenth repetition of it he
is ready to swear to all the material state
ments, and then he cannot rest until he has
seen his invention in print. With persever-
ance and worry he always accomplishes this
and if his story is sufficiently brief and inn
probable to be tempting to editorial shears,
it gets copied and passes unchallenged
into history. This story, for instance, which
has imposed upon the very elect is SO stupid
that to believe it you require absolute igno-
rance of the whole range of American history.
1t represents the Executive Mansion as an
Oriental palace, guarded by lords of the bed
chamber, and secluded from the outside
world. The President is an idiot of glimmer-
ing good intentions, who cannot read or
write, who sees nobody but his jailers, and
gets no hint of the outside world until this
adventurous friend bursts through his en-
comprising entertainments and let's in the day
on his blinking eyes. Then he is all candor
and goodness-all goodwill and teachable-
ness-and the war goes bravely on, and the
country is saved.
Now the good-natured zany described in
these romances (for the above is only oneof a
hundred which are current) was a man over
fifty years of age, who had practiced law sue
cessfully all his life, who had been in Con-
gress and his State Legislature, who had
been the leader of his party in Illinois for
twenty years, who was the most consummate
and far-seeing political manager in the Mis-
sissippi Valley. He knew by education and
instinct the general drift and tendency of
American politics better than any man in
Congress. Hekeptthe mere politicians dancing
about him like puppets to his piping. He was
honest, as statesmen go, but he never de-
spised human weaknesses and follies as
means of government. He said one day, in
an hour of bitterness after closing pro-
tracted local squabble with brilliant COM
promise, "All there is of honest statesman
ship consists in combining individual mean
nesses for the public good" Yet it is this
shrewd and sagacious schemer, this Machi-
ayel of the back timber, who is generally
represented by recollectors and paragraph
lists as snivelling sentmentalist, full of Gre
dulity and enthusiasm, blown to red heat by
every blast of rustic patriotism which visited
Washington.
Those impatient gentlemen who went to the
Capitol to tell him what he should do remem-
ber well enough the reception they met with.
One of them, prominent New York lawyer,
began his remarks with the swelling phrase:
'Mr President the North having generously
offered yeu its last dollar and its last man
was interrupted with the chilling retort-
'"rhat is poetical and not true. The North
gives not dollar except on good security,
and every State in the North has protested
against its quota in the draft" The speech
was entirely spoiled, and the impatient pa
triot went home to construct his report of the
interview.
We do not wish to destroy any ideal OF
moral worth. Our honest men are not &c
very numerous that we can afford to neglect
the signal instances of integrity in ofioe
But it is not necessary to emphasize a mans
honesty by making him an imbecile. And
the fatal fault Of these Lincoln anecdotes il
that while they make the President monster
offeeble goodness, they exalt and glorify the