If you wish to know the difference between an orator and an elocutionist--between what is felt and what is said--between what the heart and brain can do together and what the brain can do alone--read Lincoln's wondrous speech at Gettysburg, and then the oration of Edward Everett. The speech of Lincoln will never be forgotten. It will live until languages are dead and lips are dust. The oration of Everett will never be read. The elocutionists believe in the virtue of voice, the sublimity of syntax, the majesty of long sentences, and the genius of gesture. The orator loves the real, the simple, the natural. He places the thought above all. He knows that the greatest ideas should be expressed in the shortest words--that the greatest statues need the least drapery. Lincoln was an immense personality--firm but not obstinate. Obstinacy is egotism--firmness, heroism. He influenced others without effort, unconsciously; and they submitted to him as men submit to nature--unconsciously. He was severe with himself, and for that reason lenient with others. He appeared to apologize for being kinder than his fellows. He did merciful things as stealthily as others committed crimes. Almost ashamed of tenderness, he said and did the noblest words and deeds with that charming confusion, that awkwardness, that is the perfect grace of modesty. As a noble man, wishing to pay a small debt to a poor neighbor, reluctantly offers a hundred-dollar bill and asks for change, fearing that he may be suspected either of making a display of wealth or a pretence of payment, so Lincoln hesitated to show his wealth of goodness, even to the best he knew. A great man stooping, not wishing to make his fellows feel that they were small or mean. By his candor, by his kindness, by his perfect freedom from restraint, by saying what he thought, and saying it absolutely in his own way, he made it not only possible, but popular, to be natural. He was the enemy of mock solemnity, of the stupidly respectable, of the cold and formal. He wore no official robes either on his body or his soul. He never pretended to be more or less, or other, or different, from what he really was. He had the unconscious naturalness of Nature's self. He built upon the rock. The foundation was secure and broad. The structure was a pyramid, narrowing as it rose. Through days and nights of sorrow, through years of grief and pain, with unswerving purpose, "with malice towards none, with charity for all," with infinite patience, with unclouded vision, he hoped and toiled. Stone after stone was laid, until at last the Proclamation found its place. On that the Goddess stands.