The Abraham Lincoln Statue at Chicago is accepted as the typicalWesterner of the forum, the rostrum, and the tribune, as he stoodto be inaugurated under the war-cloud in 1861. But there is anotherLincoln as dear to the common people--the Lincoln of happy quotations,the speaker of household words. Instead of the erect, impressive,penetrative platform orator we see a long, gaunt figure, dividedbetween two chairs for comfort, the head bent forward, smilingbroadly, the lips curved in laughter, the deep eyes irradiating theircaves of wisdom; the story-telling Lincoln, enjoying the enjoyment hegave to others.
This talkativeness, as Lincoln himself realized, was a very valuableasset. Leaving home, he found, in a venture at "Yankee notion-pedling,"that glibness meant three hundred per cent, in disposing of flimsywares. In the camp of the lumber-jacks and of the Indian rangers hewas regarded as the pride of the mess and the inspirator of the tent.From these stages he rose to be a graduate of the "college" of theyarn-spinner--the village store, where he became clerk.
The store we know is the township vortex where all assemble to "swapstories" and deal out the news. Lincoln, from behind the counter--hispulpit--not merely repeated items of information which he had heard,but also recited doggerel satire of his own concoction, punning andemitting sparks of wit. Lincoln was hailed as the "capper" of any"good things on the rounds."
Even then his friends saw the germs of the statesman in the lank,homely, crack-voiced hobbledehoy. Their praise emboldened him tostand forward as the spokesman at schoolhouse meetings, lectures,log-rollings, huskings auctions, fairs, and so on--the folk-meets ofour people. One watching him in 1830 said foresightedly: "Lincolnhas touched land at last."
In commencing electioneering, he cultivated the farming population andtheir ways and diction. He learned by their parlance and Bible phrasesto construct "short sentences of small words," but he had all alongthe idea that "the plain people are more easily influenced by a broadand humorous illustration than in any other way." It is the Anglo-Saxontrait, distinguishing all great preachers, actors, and authors of thatbreed.
He acknowledged his personal defects with a frankness unique andstartling; told a girl whom he was courting that he did not believeany woman could fancy him; publicly said that he could not be in lookswhat was rated a gentleman; carried the knife of "the homeliest man";disparaged himself like a Brutus or a Pope Sixtus. But the massrelished this "plain, blunt man who spoke right on."
He talked himself into being the local "Eminence," but did not succeedin winning the election when first presented as "the humble" candidatefor the State Senate. He stood upon his "imperfect education," his notbelonging "to the first families, but the seconds"; and his shunningsociety as debarring him from the study he required.
Repulsed at the polls, he turned to the law as another channel,supplementing forensic failings by his artful story-telling. Judgeswould suspend business till "that Lincoln fellow got through with hisyarn-spinning" or underhandedly would direct the usher to get the richbit Lincoln told, and repeat it at the recess.
Mrs. Lincoln, the first to weigh this man justly, said proudly, that"Lincoln was the great favori