Springfield, Illinois, at which I was present. Mrs. Grimsley told me to select from the contents of the bureau any one of the manuscripts it contained; and supposing at that time that the two manuscripts belonged to the same lecture, I selected them. On subsequent examination I discovered that while they both treated upon the same subject (Inventions and Discoveries) they were separate lectures. Twenty-five years later I disposed of one of the manuscripts to Mr. Gunther[A] of Chicago. The other it is my hope and desire shall remain in possession of my family and its descendants._ _The manuscript is now owned by Dr. Melvin’s son, the Honorable Henry A. Melvin, a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, through whose courtesy this edition is published._ [A] _This was published in “Addresses and Letters of Lincoln,” The Century Company, 1904._ DISCOVERIES AND INVENTIONS A LECTURE BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN All creation is a mine, and every man a miner. The whole earth, and all _within_ it, _upon_ it, and _round about_ it, including _himself_, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny. In the beginning, the mine was unopened, and the miner stood _naked_, and _knowledgeless_, upon it. Fishes, birds, beasts, and creeping things, are not miners, but _feeders_ and _lodgers_ merely. Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants and honey bees provide food for winter; but just in the _same way_ they did, when Solomon referred the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence.