Tonopah daily bonanza. [volume] (Tonopah, Nev.) 1906-1929, 1909-02-13
Roosevelt
Pays Tribute
to Lincoln
Continued from Page ID

Continued from Page ID
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 life
toward greatness 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 inability 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 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 con-
sciences were wrapped until they fail
to distinguish between good and evil.
fail to understand that strength,
ability, shrewdness, whether in the
world of business or of politics, only
serve to make their possessor a
more noxious, more evil member
of the community If they are not
guided and controlled by fine and
high moral sense.
We of this day must try to solve
many social and industrial prob
lens, requiring to an especial degree
the combination Of indomitable reso-
luton 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 ptinci-
pies, in his love for the Union! and
in his adherence of slavery. Timid
and lukewarm people were always
denouncing him because he was tool
extreme; but as a matter of fact he
meyer went to extremes, he worked
step by step; and because of this the
extremists hated am denounced him
with fervor which now seems to us
fantastic in it's dedication of the I'M
real and the impossible. At the
very time when one side was holding
him up as the apostle of social revo-
luton because he was against slav-
cry, the leading abolitionist de-
nounced him as the slave hound of
Illinois," When he was the second
time candidate for president, the
majority of his opponents attacked
him because of what they termed |
extreme radicalism, while a minority
threatened to bolt his nomination |
because he was not radical enough.
He had continually to check those
who wished to go forward too fast. |
at the very time that he overrode |
the opposition of those who wished |
not to go forward at all. The
goal was never dim before his Wis
ion; but he picked his way eau
tiously, without either halt or hurry, |
as he strobe toward it, through
such morass of difficulty that no
man of less courage would have at
tempted it, while it would surely
have overwhelmed any man of judg-
ment less serene.
Yet perhaps the most wonderful
thing of all, and, from the stand
point of the American of today and |
of the future, the most vitally i'm
portant, was the extraordinary way
in which Lincoln could fight vail
antly against what he deemed wrong
and yet preserve undiminished his
love and respect for the brother
from whom he differed. In the hour
turned any weaker mans head
in the heat of struggle which
has spurred many good man to
dreadful vindictiveness, he said
truthfully that so long as he had
been in his office he had never will
ingly planted thorn in any man
bosom, and besought his Supporters
to study the incidents of the trial
through which they were passing as
philosophy from which to learn
wisdom and not as wrongs to be
avenged; ending with the solemn ex-
hortation that as the strife was over,
all should reunite in common eff
fort to save their common country.
He lived in days that were great
and terrible, when brother fought
against brother for what each sim