Boys' and Girls' Biography of Abraham Lincoln Part 7

"I think the reasonable men of the world have long since agreed that intemperance is one of the greatest, if not the very greatest of all evils among mankind. That is not a matter of dispute, I believe. That the disease exists, and that it is a very great one, is agreed upon by all. The mode of cure is one about which there may be differences of opinions. You have suggested that in an army--our army, drunkenness is a great evil, and one which while it exists to a very great extent, we cannot expect to overcome so entirely as to leave such success in our arms as we might have without it. This, undoubtedly, is true, and while it is, perhaps rather a bad source to derive comfort from, nevertheless, in a hard struggle, I do not know but what it is some consolation to be aware that there is some intemperance on the other side, too; and that they have no right to beat us in physical combat on that ground."

MR. LINCOLN'S POEM.

Mr. Lincoln, in 1844 upon a visit to the old neighborhood in which he was raised was moved to write the following little poem. It is the only one he is known to have written.

"My childhood's home I see again, And sadden with the view; And still, as memory crowds my brain, There's pleasure in it too.

"O Memory! thou midway world 'Twixt earth and paradise, Where things decayed and loved ones lost In dreamy shadows rise.

"And, freed from all that's earthly vile, Seem hallowed, pure and bright, Like scenes in some enchanted isle All bathed in liquid light."

To Be Memorized.

Mr. Lincoln wrote many pa.s.sages worthy of being committed to memory. His phrase "Government of the people, for the people and by the people," is more quoted than any other on the question of government. I add a few that are well worthy of memorizing and remark, that every boy and girl in America ought to be able to recite the Gettysburg speech.

"Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it."

"With malice toward none and charity to all, with firmness in the right as G.o.d gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in."

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it further until it becomes alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South."

"We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though pa.s.sion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot's grave to every loving heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

"We shall n.o.bly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."

"In giving freedom to the slave, we a.s.sure freedom to the free."

"'The Father of Waters' again goes unvexed to the sea."

"Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet."

"And then there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they strove to hinder it."

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG SPEECH.

Four score and ten years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived or so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so n.o.bly carried on. It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion, that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall under G.o.d, have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.