Abraham Lincoln owes his fame in oratory to this democratic spirit, to the
feeling that prompted him to say, "With malice toward none; with charity
for all." Bret Harte's world-famous short stories picture the rough mining
camps. Eugene Field is a poet of that age of universal democracy, the age
of childhood. The poetry of James Whitcomb Riley is popular because it
speaks directly to the common human heart.
Although the West has already begun a period of greater repose, she has
been fortunate to retain an Elizabethan enthusiasm and interest in
many-sided life. This quality, so apparent in much of the work discussed in
this chapter, is full of virile promise for the future.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809-1865
[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
Migrating from his birthplace in Kentucky, first to Indiana and then to
Illinois, where he helped to clear the unbroken forest, Abraham Lincoln was
one of America's greatest pioneers. Shackled by poverty and lack of
education, his indomitable will first broke his own fetters and then those
of the slave. History claims him as her own, but some of the plain,
sincere, strong English that fell from his lips while he was making history
demands attention as literature.
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