The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-02-12
President Roosevelt Pays Trib'
ute TO LincOIn's Memory
AT the Celebration of His Hun.
dredth birthday.
LIKE TO WASHINGTON.
Finds Many Points of Similarity
Between the Two.
Delivers a Eulogy Replete With
Patriotic Sentiment.

Hodgenvi1le, KY, Feb. 12.-Presi-
dent Roosevelt in his address at the
laying Of the cornerstone of the Lin
coin Memorial 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 his
tory. This rail splitter. this boy who
passed his ungainly 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 strug-
gle from which the nation emerged,
purified as by fire, born anew to a
loftier life.
After long years of iron effort, and
of failure that came more often than
victory, he at last rose to the leader
ship 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 vital
task. Power was his, but not pleasure.
The burrows deepened on his brow,
but his eyes were undimmed by either
hate or fear. His gaunt shoulders
were bowed, but his steel thews never
faftered 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 life-blood of the
young men, and to feel in his every
fiber the sorrow of the women. Dis
aster 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
he Il
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.
Likeness of Washington and Lincoln.
As a people we are indeed beyond
measure fortunate in the characters
of the two greatest of our public men,
though they differed in externals, the
Virginia landed gentleman and the
Kentucky backwoodSman, they were
alike in essentials, they were alike in
each able to render service to his ma
ton and to all mankind such as no
other man of his generation 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 fnfiexible courage in adj
versity, and a soul wholly unspoiled
ny prosperity EdCA pOSSGSS0u all the
gentler virtues commonly exhibited by
good men who lack rugged strength
of character. Each possessed also all
the strong qualities commonly ex-
hibited by those towering masters 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 disinterestedness in battling for
the good Of others.
There have been other men as great
and other 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
Washington when he founded this ma
ton, to Lincoln when he saved it and
freed the slave, yet the qualities they
showed in meeting these problems are
exactly the same as those we should
show in doing our work today.
Looked Into the Future.
Lincoln saw into the future with the
prophetic Imagination usually vouch- |
safed only to the poet and the seer He
had in him all the lift toward great
ness of the visionary, without any of
the visionary's fanaticism or egotism,
without any of the visionary's narrow
jealousy of the practical man and ina
bility to strive in practical fashion for
the realization of an ideal. He had the
practical mans hard common sense and
willingness to adapt means to ends; |
but there was in him none of that NOR