Many people vaguely know that an assertion may be wrong, they even more vaguely know what is the right thing, and, when some one appears to state clearly what is wrong, and to give a clear idea of what is right, and a clear vision of the right way, then he becomes the embodiment of the people and they follow him. It was thus that Lincoln was the superbly great man. In the days when Americanism was a mist and a fog in so many high places, Lincoln stood forth as the embodied patriotism and mind of America. When men stormed around him with ideas as diverse as the wind, he was a soul high and clear as the unchanging sun. The storm-makers are gone, but Lincoln remains, unchanged, one of the beacon lights of mankind. Lincoln's favorite poem reflects the deep burden of his own soul. It is a long poem written by William Knox, who was a much valued friend of Sir Walter Scott. * * * * * Four of the stanzas are as follows: "Oh! Why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passeth from life to his rest in the grave. "So the multitude goes like the flower or the weed, That withers away to let others succeed; So the multitude comes--even these we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told. "Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in sunshine and rain; And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge, Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. "'Tis the wink of an eye,--'tis the draught of a breath; From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded salon to the bier and the shroud; O, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!" II. FREEDOM TO MISREPRESENT IS NOT FREEDOM One of the great perils of the American republic, which makes progress so slow and misery so rich in victims, is the perversions which opponents put upon the words of public men, and the distortions which are given to their meaning. It is not only brutal, but to misshape righteous ideas is treason to those who receive them, and it brands such malefactors as criminal minds. The traitor and the liar are abhorred, but somehow we have not yet classified the unspeakable vice that deforms minds by disfiguring ideas so that they make a man say what he never said and to represent what he never was. This malignant vice is not above the village gossip and the vile tongue of common slander, but it has been especially the method of gamblers in the most sacred social interests, and of demagogues trying to control the election of officers and legislators for our government.