The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-13

He was the one speaker who was not on the stand, an omission due to the fact that his speech was not made from there.
 The cornerstone is fine specimen of gray granite. about three feet square, and 1t was appropriately crowned with a wreath of carnations presented by the Kentucky Lincoln association.
 The President boarded his train for Louisville at 9:45 p. m., expecting to ar rive at Washington about p. m tomor- row.
 Presidents Address.
 President Roosevelt spoke as follows:
 We have met here to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the two greatest Americans: of one of the two or three greatest men of the nineteenth century; of one of the greatest men in the worlds history. This rail splitter, this boy who passed his un- gainly youth in the dire poverty of the poorest of the frontier folk, whose rise was by weary and painful labor, lived to lead his people through the burning flames of a struggle from which the na- tion emerged, purified as by fire, born anew to loftier life. After long years of iron effort and of failure that came more often than victory, he at last rose to the leadership of the republic at the moment when that leadership had become the stupendous world-task of the time. He grew to know greatness, but never ease. Success came to him, but never happiness. save that which springs from doing well a painful and a vital task. Power was his, but not pleasure. The furrows deepened on his brow, but his eyes were undimmed by either hate or fear. His gaunt shoulders were bowed but his steel thews never faltered as he bore for a burden the destinies of his people. His great and tender heart shrank from giving pain; and the task allotted him was to pour out like water the lifeblood of the young men, and to feel in his every fiber the sorrow of the women. Disaster saddened but never dismayed him. As the red years of war went by they found him ever doing his duty in the present. ever facing the future with fearless front high of heart and dauntless of soul. Unbroken by hatred. unshaken by scorn, he worked and suffered for the people Triumph was his at the last; and barely had he tasted it before murder found him, and the kindly, patient, fearless eyes were closed forever.
 Two Great Men.
 "As a people we are indeed beyond measure fortunate in the characters of the two greatest of our public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they differed in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Kentucky backswoodsman, they were alike in essen- tials, they were alike in the great qual- ities which rendered each able to render service to his nation and to all man. kind such as no other man of his gep- eration could or did render. Each had lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain these lofty ideals was guided by the soundest common sense Each possessed inhexible courage in diversity, and a soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each possessed all the gentler virtues com monly exhibited by good men who lack rugged strength of character. Each pos sessed also all the strong qualities com monly exhibited by those towering mas ters of mankind who have too often shown themselves devoid of so much as the understanding of the words by which we signify the qualities of duty, of mercy of devotion to the right. of lofty disin- terestedness in battling for the good of others. There have been other men as great and other good men as good; but in all the history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these, no other two good men as great. Widely though the problems of today differ from the problems set for solution to Wash ington when he founded this nation, to Lincoln when he saved 1t and freed the slave, yet the qualities they showed in meeting these problems are exactly the same those we should show in doing our work today.
 Vision of Future.
 "Lincoln saw into the future with the prophetic imagination usually vouchsafed only to the poet and the seer. He hat in him all the lift toward greatness of the visionary, without any of the vis- ionarYs fanaticism egotism, without any of the visionarys narrow jealousy of the practical man and inability to strive in practical fashion for the realiza- ton of an ideal. He had the practical mans hard common sense and willing ness to adapt means to ends; but there was in him none of that morbid growth of mind and soul which blinds so many practical men to the higher things of life. No more practical man eyer lived than this homely backswoods idealist; but he had nothing in common with those practical men whose consciences are warped until they fail to distinguish between good and evil fall to under stand that strength ability, shrewdness, whether in the world of business or of politics, only serve to make their pos sessor more noXious a more evil mem Der of the community, if they are not guided and controlled by a fine and high moral sense.
 Many Problems.
 we of this day must try to solve many soclal anu lnuuStrlal problems, recurring to an especial degree the combination of indomitable resolution with cool-headed sanity. We can profit by the way in which Lincoln used both these traits as he strove for reform. We can learn much of value from the very attacks which following that course brought upon his head, attacks alike by the extremists of revolution and by the extremists of reaction. He never wavered in devotion to his principles, in his love for the Union, and in his adherence of slavery Timid and lukewarm people were always denouncing him because he was too ex- treme; but as a matter of fact he never went to extremes, he worked step by step; and because of this the extremists hated and denounced him with a fervor which now seems to frantic in it's deification of the unreal and the impos- sible. At the very time when one side was holding him up as the apostle of social revolution because he was against slavery the leading abolitionist denounc- ed him as the slave hound of Illinois, When he was the second time candidate