But his private personal culture, as one [Footnote: Herbert Croly, Lincoln as more than an American in his "Promise of American Life," pp. 89-99.] has observed, had no "embarrassing effects," because he shared so completely and genuinely the amusements and occupations of his neighborhood. No "taint of bookishness" disturbed the local fellowships which gave him opportunity to express in "familiar and dramatic form" of story and illustration his more substantial philosophy and so find for it the perfect speech. His neighbors called him by homely, affectionate names, thinking he was entirely one of them--a little more clever, a little less ambitious in the usual channels of business and enterprise. He had no "moral strenuousness of the reformer" and no "exclusiveness" of learning. He "accepted the fabric of traditional American political thought." He seemed "but the average product," and yet, as this same writer has said, "at bottom Abraham Lincoln differed as essentially from the ordinary western American of the middle period as St. Francis of Assisi differed from the ordinary Benedictine monk of the thirteenth century." [Footnote: Croly, "Promise of American Life," p. 90.] He was not, like Jackson, simply a large, forceful version of the plain American trans-Alleghany citizen; he made no clamorous, boastful show of strength, powerful as he was physically and intellectually. He shared genuinely, with no consciousness of his own distinction, the "good-fellowship of his neighbors, their strength of will, their excellent faith, and above all their innocence." But he made himself, by discipline of his own, "intellectually candid, concentrated, and disinterested and morally humane, magnanimous and humble." This is not the picture of a conventional, generic democrat; and this is not, we are assured by the earlier writers, the picture of the westerner of that period. Indeed, Mr. Croly insists that while these Lincolnian qualities are precisely the qualities which Americans, in order to become better democrats, should add to their strength, homogeneity, and innocence, they are just the qualities (high intelligence, humanity, magnanimity, and humility) which Americans are "prevented by their individualistic practice and tradition from attaining or properly valuing." "Their deepest convictions," he contends, "make the average unintelligent man the representative democrat, and the aggressive, successful individual the admired national type." To them Lincoln is simply "a man of the people" and an example of strong will. But the man who said this did not know that land of Lincoln--which was the valley of La Salle, and even before that the valley of the tribe of men-- for I believe its inhabitants knew that he was the embodiment of what they coveted for themselves; that he was not their ordinary average but their best selves.