The copper era., 1909-02-18
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
A Tribute Paid to Him by President
 Roosevelt.


 hundredth anniversary of the birth of one ot the two greatest Ameri- cans; of one of the two or three greatest men of the nineteenth cen tury; of one of the greatest men in the worlds history. This rail split ter, this boy passed his ungainly youth in the dire poverty of the poorest of the frontier folks, whose rise was by weary and painful labor, lived to lead his people through the burning flames of a struggle from which the nation emerged, purified as by fire, born anew to lOftier life. After long years of iron effort, and of failure that came often than vic tory, 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 a vital task Power was his, but not pleasure. The furrows deeCened 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 tke red years of war went by they found him ever doing his duty in the present, eyer 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 be- fore murder found him, and the kind ly, patielt, fearless eyes were closed forever.
 "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 ex- ternals, the Virginia landed gentle man and the Kentucky backwoOds- man, they were alike in essentials, they were alike in the great quail ties which rendered each able to render service to his nation 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 infexible courage in diversity, and d soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each possessed all the gentler virtues commonly exhibited by good men who lack rugged strength of character. Each possessed also all the strong qualities commonly exhibited by those towering masters of mankind who have too often shown themselves devoid of so much as the understand ing of the words by which we signify the qualities of duty, mercy, devotion to the right, of lofty interestedness 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; nc other two good men as great. Wide ly though the problems of today differ from the problems set for solution to Washington when he founded this nation, 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.
 Lincoln saw into the future with the prophetic imagination usually vouchsafed only to the poet and the seer. He had in him all the lift to- ward greatness of the visionary, without any of the visionary's fanati- cism or egotism, without any of the visionary's narrow jealousy of the practical man and inability to strive in practical fashion for the realiza- tiou of an ideal. He had the practi- cal mans hard common sense and willingness to adapt means to an end; 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 ever lived than this homely backwoods idealist; but he had nothing in common with those practical men whose consciences are wrapped until they fail to distinguish between good and evil, fail to under stand that strength, ability, shrewd- ness, whether in the world of busi- ness or of politics, only serve to make their possessor d more noXious, a more evil member of the commun-
 A Common Cold.