Charles Sumner refused to lecture at any price. “My time belongs to Massachusetts and the nation,” he said. Big money was not his idol. Thomas Jefferson died insolvent. Was he therefore a failure? Abraham Lincoln died a poor man. Was he also a failure? Grant died so poor that his opinion on “how to succeed” would have been of no value to the money-mad, even if he had left it. Finally, can you imagine any of the great real benefactors of mankind plotting to make the service they rendered a heavy tax upon posterity for maintaining their descendants in foolish idleness and luxury? Sooner or later there will be a reaction from this search for “the secret of success” among the trust kings and the sudden-rich heroes of the stock ticker. “I know of no great men,” says Voltaire, “except those who have rendered great service to the human race.” Judged by that true standard, the mere makers of “big money” cannot tell our young men the “secret of success.” They do not know it themselves. The money success is blatant and strong. It flaunts itself and tries to absorb all attention. But it ought not to deceive any but the superficial observers of the American people. Our ideals still centre in the affections, not in the appetites. To be free, to love, to think, to grow--the joy of life. That sums up America. Gilt may for the moment reign; but gilt does not rule. CHAPTER XVIII THE MAN OF TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW In Chicago, in Lincoln Park, there is a wonderful statue. A big, slouching form, loose yet powerful; ungraceful, yet splendid because it seems to be able to bear upon its Atlantean shoulders the burdens of a mighty people. The big hands, the big feet, the great, stooped shoulders tell the same story of commonness and strength. Then you look at the face. You find it difficult to keep your hat upon your head. What a countenance! How homely, yet how beautiful; how stern, yet how gentle; how inflexible, yet how infinitely merciful; how powerful, yet how tender; how common, yet how sublime! Search the world through and you will find no greater statue than this--the statue of Abraham Lincoln, by St. Gaudens. It is Lincoln; but it is also a great deal more. It is the glorification of the Common Man--the apotheosis of Democracy. As you look at that face and that figure you feel the history of the human race, the long, the bloody, the agonized struggle of the masses of mankind for freedom and light. You see the whole history of your own country, founded by common men for the common people, founded upon freedom and equality and justice. Here is no vain haughtiness, no arrogance, no supercilious looking down, no cringing looking upward, nothing that suggests class or rank or aristocracy. Here is Democracy, the Common Man exalted in the dignity of his own rights, in the splendor of the recognition of the equal rights of all others; the Common Man, free and enlightened, strong and just.