And first, each must be born for greatness. This may seem strange to the uninitiated, but no man knows the truth of it more than he who has spent his life in breeding great horses and in studying great men. It is pedigree that counts in man and horse, and by pedigree I do not mean blood lines only, though they count more in the life of the lower animal, the horse, than in the life of the higher animal, the man. Blood lines alone will not carry a man through the battle of life and bring him out victor at the end. For there are two pedigrees in every man which count for greatness or weakness in him. One is the pedigree of his body, the other is the pedigree of his soul. With horse, the pedigree of body counts most. With man, the soul. For it is that which counts for honesty, for singleness of purpose, for truthfulness, for silence, for thought, for right living, for that deathless spirit which never says die. In victory, calm; in defeat, silent, but saying proudly: “Out of the darkness which surrounds me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods there be For my unconquerable soul.” Unfortunately for man--outside of the pygmies which some call kings--he keeps no record of his pedigree. This is wrong, for man should at least take as much interest in his own pedigree as he does in his horses’ or his dogs’. And so, now and then, a master, in his craft, comes out of the great mass of humanity, with no extended pedigree but the product of earnest and honest and strong God-fearing fathers and mothers of many, many centuries. The child may not know them but for one generation, but they are all there--there in his blood and his brain and his brawn. And so he is born honest and earnest and strong. Such is Ed Geers--a man who has come up from the common people. Common people of a century ago, but O, how uncommon now in these days of trusts and steals and grinding graft! In these days, when a millionaire is a poor man, these days of the Equitable, these days of Rockefeller, these days of the cursed trusts and tariff and the unspeakable graft-days when man is nothing and money all. God of our fathers, give us back again the days of the honest common people! From such source comes Shakespeare, whose genius was also the product of honesty, of brawn, of rest. Shakespeare, who has written and left nothing else to be said! From such a source came James Knox, and Andrew Jackson, and John Wesley, and Abraham Lincoln--these and every other great man whose silent statues now stand as the mile-posts of human progress, each marking an era in the epoch of the thing God made him for.