The river press. [volume] (Fort Benton, Mont.) 1880-current, 1906-03-14
MAN AND HIS OPPORTUNITIES.

MAN AND HIS Opportunities.
A writer in Scribner wonders what
the worlds estimate of Lincoln would
have been had the south triumphed,
and thinks he would have still been
held as the wisest of councillors and
the most incisive speaker of his age.
No one cau tell. Suppose Washing
ton had failed, been captured ana
hanged, how would his fame have
been rated?
Had Mr.. Lincoln died a year after
his first Inauguration, we believe his
fame would not have outlived the
generation of the neighbors that knew
him. In the same way had Washing
ton been killed in the last battle before
he drew his line around CORVALLIS,
he before this time would have passed
into the silence. At best MIR. Lincoln
would have been known as the lawyer,
and General Washington as the
soldier. They would have been just
as great men but the world would not
have known them. So had there been
no al General Grant would have
died in obscurity, no one would have
ever dreamed that in his quiet and
half-shy nature there slumbered a
force which the events of four years Of
awful war could never measure or
daunt, Dr. that in that mind was hidden
the subtle mathematics which reduced
to practice meant that q sixteen pound
hammer when properly propelled
would be sure to knock out of the way
q ten pound hammer, and he always
managed to have the sixteen pound
hammer.
We forget that in estimating the
greatness of lei who have won fame
by action, the prime factor is oppor.
tunity. In unknown graves in every
land are the caskets which hold the
dust of men, who under proper
opportunities would have rung the
world. The opportunity came to the
men named above and held them under
kindly stars until they had the chance
to reveal what was in them.
Washington might have been the
king of q constitutional monarchy
like Great Britain. Some Of the wisest
men around him believed that would
be the very best form OF government.
Had that been decided upon think how
dwarfed would have been Washing.
trn's fame now. Washington was big
enough to believe that such an ar.
rangement would not be the best thing
for his countrymen and he put the
thought aside. That Is what secured
for him the same immortality which
the memory OF Cincinnatus is clothed
In.
MIR. Lincoln lived long enough to
enable him to look beyond the lclouds
of war and to picture q government
where all would be free, the humblest
as we'll as the highest, q government
of the people, by the people and for
GuO RCVRIC1 OuV VvCA VASo A0Oo OON0N
upon his s%hambling form and watched
his careless ways still doubted his
sovereign greatness over all around
him until they read Of his death and
for the first time realized what he was.
And Grant was never understood
until he drafted the terms Of the final
surrender at Appomatox.
His wording so that the officers Of
the contederacy would not have to give
up their swords. and his remark thai
the defeated army would need thei'
horses In order to plant their spring
crops, and his question to Genera
Lee asking him il his army did no
need rations, showed over the grea
captain the sterling man. But it ii
idle to ask what o man would hav'
been except for his opportunities: tina
Is in the field Of war or of statesman
ship and in many fields where courage
action and sagacity are the workin!
factors.-Goodwin's Weekly.