The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1895-04-04
uNcoLk's GETTYSBURG SPEECH.


Sublime and I IMMORTAL. Though MassAsw
Arnold Had Never Heard Of IL.
l stood close by and heard that speech
delivered. 1t came upon Us after the
ponderous and elaborate rhetoric Of Ed
ward Everett like . blaze Of real fire
after a matchless picture Of fire. It
sprang. like the strophes Of old, out Of
. chastened heart almost broken with
the weight of conquest, but still daunt-
less in its American faith, and the man
who spoke the words was, for the mo-
ment, TRANSPORTED for us, and his fur
rowed face and gaunt form took on
the light that never was on land or
sea, SO that he became the archetype of
the people themselves, uttering better
than he knew the great prayer Of that
finer and better humanity that our IA
theirs and we believed was to come with
liberty and equality out of storm and
stress and an mistaken confidence in
man.
But l don't think any Of us then
knew how masterful is the speech Of
the human heart when it comes through
the furnace to these great occasions and
plants it's sad sincerity by the side of
mere scholarship and the grooved thun-
der of rhetoric.
We had to live on for q quater Of q
century and see that brief speech burn
ing with unquenchable fame in our
schoolbDoks and standing out with mod
est majesty OH our page Of recorded
history to comprehend how God can
touch with q living coal the lips Of q
rail splitter just as he touched the lips
of a tentmaker Of Tarsus and lifted the
untutored heart Of the shoemaker, Bum
yam, into communion with the immor-
tails.
Turn it every way you can, the Get
tysburg speech stands unique as a brief
literary and patriotic composition. 1t is
the noblest condensation into the fittest
words of all the emotions, aspirations
and sentiments that millions Of mute
people wanted at that moment to utter.
So inwrought is that speech with the
heart of the occasion, and so majestic
ally does it sweep over into the time to
come. that l should think all men every
where would discern its intrinsic quail.
ty. But that is not the case.
I remember talking with Matthew
Arnold when he was in this country
about Abraham Lincoln-you will re-
member that he said of Lincoln that he
had no Observation-Disclosures / called his
attention to the Gettysburg speech. l
shall never forget the imperturbabls
Saturday Review stare with which he
asked, "Ah, what is the Gettysburg
speech?"
He had never heard Of it. I believe
when he went back he asked Professor
Bryce what it was about, and when it
vas hunted up in an American school
book and shown to him he read it hasti-
ly and put it away with commissioning
reticence.
Suppose you ask NJ. Bourget, who is
looking into the American heart by the
way of the American bodice and on
space rates, if he has read the Gettys-
burg speech. happen to know Of my
owl knowledge that Robert Louis
Stevenson had not heard Of it when he
was CApIOAihS JUL SOAblIJCJts ouu OH
Lepel Griffin and Rudyard Kipling had
an idea that it was a newspaper fake.
The current number of The Saturday
Review lies open before me, and this Is
what my eye falls N:
THE common American delusion
that there have been a number of great
American poets. that there is indeed
such q thing as American literature,
disports itself with unusual pomposity."
1t is impossible for these literary
prigs of q special cult to understand
that there may be stimulant condi-
tons of national life that wake into
tumultuous activity all the higher and
better functions Of the soul prior to the
chartered formulation Of them into an
art, and that it is in these periods of
awakening and not in the after repose
Of an elaborate 3stheticism the most
precious heartbeats of the race have
made themselves heard and felt, some
times in half articulate tones, but often
or in organ blasts which have set the
key of liberty and fixed the vocabulary
Of hope and victory.
= Before eloquence or poetry was an art
It was a burning soul and fetched its
style from the agonies and mysteries of
an untutored nature.
Let us by all means confer distinc.
ton OH a deathless utterance by mold
ing it in bronze. If we add metal enough
and surround it with the arabesque of
Oxford, future Matthew Arnolds may
join the pilgrims and throw the English
tribute of a we'll turned phrase upon
the tablet, which, after all, is but a
weak hieroglyph of the record in TO-
600, 600 hearts. Andrew &. Wheeler
in New York Sun.
A Carrier Ri1e0n,R RAfurn.