Loving, loyal, faithful Abe Lincoln! May your name never be belittled by any of your descendants adopting a crest or coat-of-arms. Your coat-of-arms is engraved in figures as lasting as the eternal hills of America upon the minds of the people. Should a degenerate descendant seek a coat-of-arms, let him make it an axe and rail, surrounded by the laurel wreath bestowed by the loving, trusting people; for Abe Lincoln was best and only loved by the very term by which the aristocrats attempted to disparage him--“the rail-splitter.” After the election of Abraham Lincoln, while he remained at Springfield, the chosen representative of the people, he was the most approachable man in America; even though at that time he must have felt the heavy weight of responsibility thrust upon him, viewing as he could the mass which, like a snowball, was increasing as it progressed under the weak administration of his predecessor. Think of the anxious hours that this man spent, knowing what the people expected of him, and seeing the number of his difficulties being added to, day by day, while those who had the burden to bear were obliged, until the fourth of the succeeding March, to sit still and watch the accumulation. Yet in those anxious hours, while receiving counsel of the mighty of the political world, many of whom were strangers to him and to whom he was a stranger, yet, still, while watching thus, the pillar of the Union, stone by stone falling away; while thus counselled, advised by those he knew not whether to trust or not; while his mind must necessarily have been weighed down with the thought of his own possible inability to meet the expectations of his friends, the people, in that great new sphere to which they had called him, Abe Lincoln still had time to grasp the hand and wish good cheer to an old friend, neighbor, or one of the people. From birth to death, his life will form a lesson that the new Chief of the people whom they have called to be President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, could well study, and Abe Lincoln’s example emulate, if he would hold the love of those who, by their votes, put him into the Presidential chair. This man, Abraham Lincoln, represented that class of people who had been dubbed “mudsills” by the orators who represented the believers in “caste” in the South. He stood as the very personification of “mudsillism,” which, read in the light of recently written history, meant the Common People--that is, the majority; and the majority ruled after his election in 1860, even though it required the use of bullets against the aristocratic class, just as the majority will rule in 1892, after the election of Grover Cleveland as representative of the Common People.