New Britain herald., 1916-09-04
WILSON ACCEPTS
 LINCOLN CABIN
Continued from First Page.)

most of every gift and power we pos
 sess every page of our history serves
 to emphasize and illustrate. Stand
 ing here in this place, 1t seems almost
 the whole of the stirring story.
 Here Lincoln had his beginnings.
 Here the end and consummation of
 that great life seem remote and a bit
 incredible. And yet there was no
 break anywhere between beginning and end, no lack of natural sequence
 anywhere. Nothing really incredible
 happened Lincoln was unaffectedly
 as much at home in the White House
 as he was here. Do you share with
 me the feeling, I wonder, that he was
 permanently at home nowhere? It
 seems to me that in the case of a
 man. would rather say of a spirit
 like Lincoln the question where he
 was is of little significance, that it is
 always what he was that really ar
 rests our thought and takes hold of
 our imagination. It Is the spirit al-
 ways that is sovereign. Lincoln, like the rest of us, was put through the discipline of the world,-a rough and
 exacting discipline for him, an 1ndis-
 pensable discipline for every man who would know what he Is about in the midst of the worlds affairs; but his spirit got only it's schooling there. It did not derive its character or it's vision from the experiences which brought 1t to it's full revelation. The test of every American must always be, not where he is. but what he is. That, also, is of the essence of de- mocracy and is the moral of which this place Is most gravely expressive.
 we would like to think of men like Lincoln and Washington as typi- cal Americans, but no man can be typical who is so unusual as these great men were. It was typical of American life that 1t should produce such men with supreme indifference as to the manner in which it pro- duced them, and as readily here in this hut as amidst the little circle of cultivated gentlemen to whom Vir- ginia owed so much in leadership and example. And Lincoln and Washing ton were typical Americans in the use they mads of their genius. But there | will be few such men at best, and we l will look into the mystery of how l and why they come. We will only l keep the door open for them always, | and hearty Welcome,-after we l have recognized them.
 Lincoln a Lonely Spirit
 ''I have read many biographies of l I have sought out with the 1 greatest interest the many intimate stories that are told of him. the mar natives of nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, in which those who i had the privilege of being associated 1 with him have tried to depict for us the very man himself in his habit as he lived;' but I have nowhere found ] real intimate of Lincoln's. I mo- where get the impression in any nar- 'ative or reminiscence that the writer had in fact penetrated to the heart of 1is mystery, or that any man could penetrate to the heart of It. That orooding spirit had no real familiars. get the impression that it never spoke out in complete self-revelation, and that 1t could not reveal itself to anyone. It was a very
 lonely spirit that looked out from those shaggy brows and l men without fully with them, as if, in spite of all it's genal efforts at comrade eship, | 1t dwelt apart, saw it's visions of duty where no man looked on. There is B very holy and very terrible isola- ton for the conscience of every man l who seeks to read the destiny in af- fairs for others as well as for him' self, for a nation as well as for in- dividual That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist. Ths strange child of the cabin kept company with invisible ] things, was born into no intimacy but 1 that of it's own silently assembling and deploying thoughts.
 "I have come here today not to 1