ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 175 



only by taking it for granted that they had brains and 

 would come up to a common ground of reason. In an 

 article lately printed in *' The Nation," Mr. Bayard 

 Taylor mentions the striking fact, that in the foulest 

 dens of the Five Points he found the portrait of Lincoln. 

 The wretched population that makes its hive there 

 threw all its votes and more against him, and yet paid 

 this instinctive tribute to the sweet humanity of his 

 nature. Their ignorance sold its vote and took its 

 money, but all that was left of manhood in them recog- 

 nized its saint and martyr. 



Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, "This is 

 my opinion, or my theory," but, " This is the conclusion 

 to which, in my judgment, the time has come, and to 

 which, accordingly, the sooner we come the better for 

 us." His policy has been the policy of public opinion 

 based on adequate discussion and on a timely recogni- 

 tion of the influence of passing events in shaping the 

 features of events to come. 



One secret of Mr. Lincoln's remarkable success in 

 captivating the popular mind is undoubtedly an un- 

 consciousness of self which enables him, though under 

 the necessity of constantly using the capital /, to do it 

 without anv sugo-estion of egotism. There is no sino;le 

 vowel which men's mouths can pronounce with such 

 difference of effect. That which one shall hide away, 

 as it were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if 

 he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give an 

 agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another 

 shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction 

 of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon 

 each man's sense of personal importance, irritating every 

 pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose- 

 flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never 

 studied Quinctilian ; but he has, in the earnest sim^ 



