The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -20--end

The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -20--end

There has been nothing of Cleon, still less of Strepsiades(2)
striving to underbid him in demagogism, to be found in the
public utterances of Mr. Lincoln. He has always addressed
the intelligence of men, never their prejudice, their
passion, or their ignorance. (1) A famous Latin writer on
the *Art of Oratory.* (2) Two Athenian demagogues, satirized
by the dramatist Aristophanes.
__________________________ On the day of his death, this
simple Western attorney, who according to one party was a
vulgar joker, and whom the *doctrinaires* among his own
supporters accused of wanting every element of statesmanship,
was the most absolute ruler in Christendom, and this solely
by the hold his good-humored sagacity had laid on the hearts
and understandings of his countrymen. Nor was this all, for
it appeared that he had drawn the great majority, not only of
his fellow-citizens, but of mankind also, to his side. So
strong and so persuasive is honest manliness without a single
quality of romance or unreal sentiment to help it! A
civilian during times of the most captivating military
achievement, awkward, with no skill in the lower
technicalities of manners, he left behind him a fame beyond
that of any conqueror, the memory of a grace higher than that
of outward person, and of a gentlemanliness deeper than mere
breeding. Never before that startled April morning did such
multitudes of men shed tears for the death of one they had
never seen, as if with him a friendly presence had been taken
away from their lives, leaving them colder and darker. Never
was funeral panegyric so eloquent as the silent look of
sympathy which strangers exchanged when they met on that day.
Their common manhood had lost a kinsman.