The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-02-14
sgH1TIg. SUNDAY. YEB. ~.
LINcoLx,s DAY.


neDorated On Friday from East 70 West.
A beautiful factor In LiBeolD's rich and
various mentality was bis sense Of hgnsor.
An eloqusn. critic once said Of him. He
vas strange roing1iag IL rnirth and tears;
Of the tragic and the gsotesqus; Of Socrates
and Rabeiais."
Why stranger Extreme ssnsihilitY 70
mirth Is almost invariably married in a su-
perior man with sensibility n melancholy.
Nelson, the heroic ge1ius os battle in
yea Eight. was 10 private life shy,
melancholy man. tender and sffsc-
tionats 70 tie point Of senti-
mental weakness, shedding tears Gag
fly. and with his dying breath bidding
Captain Hardy kiss him farewell Wolfe,
the hero Of QEsbec. had this same tenn
permanent: man Of herolsfn in batsIe, Of
poetic sentiment in peace and private life;
Grant, once deemed 40 unsynpatbetic
man. left the shelter Of his headquarters
ai shilob and slept in the open ar on the
ground ~ pouring rain because be could
not endure the suiFerings Of the wounded
that Glled the house. The iron Duke Of
Wellington shed tears IN the house Of
lords when be spoke Of Sir Robert Peei's
death. George Washington. called cold
and naughty, kissed General Knox and
thsd tesFs when he babe farewell to his
comrades In arms. Lee had tears 10 his
eyes when be parted with bis heroic
remnant at Appomattoz; Tom Hood, the
most fertile huEnorist Of his day, wrote the
most pathetic poems in the English Ian
gusge: Charles Lamb, exquisite humorist,
sDounded in patnos; the stately and aus
tere Puritan scholar. Milton. shows his
tender sensibiIity in Lycidas: Shaks-
peare's grasp Of the pathetic was as firm
as his sway Of tragic or comic
muse; Tbacker ay, termed cynic By
doll women and dude men, drew
figure Of most pathetic dignity
In the manliness, tenderness and
moral meekness Of Colonel Thomas New
com; ceryantes' description Of the death
Of Don Qnixote has pathetic quality;
Piato's last night Of Socrates is as pathetic
ss the description Of "the Last Supper"
and George Eliot was equally conspicuous
for sensibiiity 70 laughter and tears that
has been called strange mIngIing" in
Lincoln.
There is nothing at all strange about it.
The strange thing would be to find large
and superior mind without this sensibil-
ity. both TO the comic and the pathetic.
tragic eide Of life. Lincoln was not mere
Joker. disseminattr Of rank anecdotes;
he was a great aud profound hamorist.
Napoleon lacked this sympathetic tender
ness Of Lincoln, because he vas
brutal, but to@eFingiy intellectual egotist
Carlyle, Ike Napoleon. had plenty OF wit,
but lacked tenderness for others for the
same reason that every profoundly, in
grained selfish man lacks IL. II is also
fair 20 inquire whether Lincoln min
gled the gfotesque with the tragic
was half Socrates and half Rabeias,
There Is no proof OF IT, Lincoln
bad the soeratic quality. but Of the rank
humor and grotesque fun OF Rabelais he
had no, a trace. Rabeiais' wit Is Of the
ribald, obscene kind that Shakespeare
puts ia the mouth Of Jack Fall
staff IL We may believe General
Grants testimony. while LincoIn's hurnor
was as uafaiiing as the geyser
springs Of the Yellowstone park, it vas
never either obscene OF irFevcrent. Its
true tha; Lincoln did open the cabinet
meeting. in which he without any preyi-
Gus warning submitted the emanc patton
proclamation. by reading a chapter from
"The orpheus c. Kerr Papers" popular
political satire Of the day, but the ex-
PLANTATION Of this act is found In the nat
ural, not in the grotesque
II was long Lincoin's habit when he felt
his constitutional melancholy creeping
over him, in consequence OF the contem-
p!ation OF the succession OF the awful
defeats 10 Union arms that marked the
bloody battle summer of is82 to lift his
mind out of its mood Of morbid introspec-
ton by reading something that would
rouse his sense OF the ridicu-
lous and make him again
stalwart executive actor rather than a sor-
rowful dreamer, He did i. deliberately as
n seda;ive or stimalant, just as many
men, like Grant, when depressed
or under great strain, light
cigar aud puff themselves into
calmness and mental oomposure Lincoln
read Orpheus c. Kerr and Ar,ernus Ward
20 his cabinet not only to divert his own
mind from dwelling upon the cares that
infested his day and followed him not as
single spies but in battalions, but also 10
rouse aud divert the oppressed minds of
his cabinet, so that they would be ready
TO grapple with the great question he
was about TO precipitate upon them
without any interference, without any
color of the chronic gloom that
he knew affected their spirits as
1t did his own great soul. There was
nothing groiesque in the act; it was en-
tirely practical; he was only taking his
own tonic for depression OF spirits and
trying TO make his cabinet take it, who
needed it as badly as himself
Lincoln was Of Socratjc quality in his
power Of understanding and dislectlcal
skull. but he did not touch elbows sympa-
thetlcally with Raoelsis; he was not
rrotesque, Nevertheless it is true that
lincoln 10: seldom provoked the indigna-
ton Of able men, utterly destitute of any