A Lesson from Lincoln

A LESSON FROM LINCOLN BY HON. WILLIAM W. WILSON. [Utah is well in the front rank of the states that provide good school facilities for her children. The substantial and commodious school buildings that exist here, and are being increased in number as required, are a prominent feature of our life. One of the best equipped of the public school buildings yet erected in the state is the fine edifice just completed by the Jordan school district, in Salt Lake county, at the head of Main street, Sandy City. In its outside aspect, the building presents an imposing appearance, and from its site on the slight eminence where it is built, it commands a magnificent view of the Salt Lake Valley, covering almost the entire course of the Jordan river and a large area of Great Salt Lake. In its internal arrangements are incorporated the most modern facilities for school woik. This building was dedicated on the evening of Wednesday, February 12, with New School House, Sandy, Utah.

A LESSON FROM LINCOLN. 451 appropriate exercises, which were witnessed by a large concourse of people from various parts of the school district. A feature of the occasion was the presentation of a beautiful bust of Abraham Lincoln — the date being the anniversary of Lincoln's birth— by Hon. William W. Wilson, Mayor ->f Sandy City. The address of presentation contains a timely lesson from the life of the great Lincoln. — Editors ] On an occasion such as this, how pleasant it is to greet these children, pupils in our public schools, their cheerful faces beaming with an intelligence that comes through the loving homes, happy hearts, and prosperous circumstances of a people who rank in the forefront of the civilization of our time. In such a realization as the present must bring to every contemplative mind, well may we exclaim, "Blessings on the blessed children," and in our inmost souls echo and re-echo to that prayer a fervent "amen and amen." Our hearts are filled with love for these school children, and we are eager to bless them; our hearts are filled with the love of home, and we desire to augment the happiness there; our hearts are filled with the love of our state, and we wish to add to its welfare and influence ; our hearts are filled with the love of our country, and we pray and work earnestly for its continued success, and honor, and glory. And because we love our country, our state, our homes, and our children, we erect these commodious and convenient school buildings and give to our public school system the best of every force for good that comes within our control. Not the least of the forces for good, from which we draw for the attainment of our desires, is the example of those great and noble men and women whose career in life has been for the uplifting of their fellow-beings. Every schoolboy and schoolgirl who respects himself and herself and hopes to be or do something that is worthy of commendation, has pride and joy in reading and learning of those great and good men and women. The real story of such lives is more entrancing than any mere fiction can be, because of the truth therein that brings it home to our souls. The poet therefore reaches our hearts in saying to us: Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;

452 IMPRO VEMENT ERA . Footprints that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's dreary main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. The schoolboy who reads the life-story of one such great man has a desire to read the life-story of others. It gives him joy, it gives him hope, it gives him real activity. And there are plenty of such life-stories in the experience of our beloved nation. We wish you to read them because of the enjoyment, and inspiration, and blessings they bestow. We bring them to you in books and in speeches, in song and in prose. We bring them to you in the highest and best art of the painter and the sculptor. We bring them to you in the thunders of our salutes on the nation s birthday. We bring them to you in the sweetest and most thrilling music of our national hymns. We bring them to you in the sweeping rivers, the far-stretching ocean coasts, the fertile valleys and plains, and the grand mountain ranges that, through their influence, have been made subject to the useful and beneficial dominion of the liberty-loving and liberty-enjoying American people. Because of this time and occasion, it is my humble pleasure to bring to you one of these life-stories that has wielded a memorable influence upon us all, through its influence upon the very existence of our nation. The form of presentation is one that I trust will be a beautiful and continual reminder of the strongest lesson of that great life. It will be visible to you every school-day, as you view in these halls the bust of one of the greatest of Americans, whose love of right and of country was stronger than love of life itself. In its material composition this bust may be inanimate, but in the features it displays, and the history. with which it is clothed, it is an example of living, loving, enduring patriotism and manhood of which every man and woman, every boy and girl, well may be proud beyond expression in words. Just ninety-nine years ago today, there was born in a country home in the state of Kentucky, the baby boy whose greatness in life as a man became to us a gem of priceless value. The boy's grandfather, whose name he bore, was shot and killed by an Indian, while at work in his cornfield. At that time, the boy's father \vas only six years old. Then, when the boy was but nine

A LESSON FROM LINCOLN. 453 years of age, his mother died. She was a good, a very good, woman, and had taught him to understand at least three important maxims which impressed him through life; these were, never to swear, never to drink liquor, and never to lie. Obedience to his mother's counsel laid the foundation of his subsequent greatness. This boy had little opportunity for school training, but made the best of what he had - less than a year in all, in the schoolroom. He worked, and worked hard, and did it willingly; and with it he thought, and thought hard. The boy who does not think, and think well, never becomes a great man. This boy did his thinking well, as he did his work. He was a deckhand on a Mississippi river flatboat, and when the family moved to Illinois, he split the timber for a log cabin which he built, and enclosed ten acres of land with a rail fence of his own making. And he read the life- stories of great men, as each of you should. One of these was the life-story of George Washington. He also read of the great and good men of whom the Bible tells. Even though not in school he continued to study, and studied hard, thus gaining a really good, practical education. It aided in making him a leader among men. He loved his fellow-men, and he disliked tyranny. In those days, a class of people in this nation was held as slaves. He hated slavery; and by his courage, his energy, his clearness of thought, and his'determination in upholding that which he conceived to be right, he became the central figure in his state, and later in the nation, among those who actively opposed slavery in the United States. He gave this maxim: Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. How grand is the principle he thus declared! How close to everv boy and girl, and to every one here! He dared to stand for the right and none could drive him from it. Many adversaries tried to change him, but he would not swerve from his place. He worked hard among the people, and brought many thousands to his wav of thinking, because he convinced them he was right His greatness was because he determined to learn the right, and when he did learn it, he would not turn away, but implicitly

454 IMPROVEMENT ERA. trusted Almighty God for the victory and his vindication. When he was elected to be the President of the United States, his love for the right, coupled with his sublime trust in the Supreme Ruler of the universe, made him the great emancipator of the Negro race in this land; but farther still, it made of him the splendid leader whose courage, energy, determination and ability were such patent factors in maintaining the American Union as one nation — undivided and not to be divided— and thus preserved to us the opportunity of our national development as it is today. At the close of his second inaugural address, given in March, 1865, he used these words: With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds: to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations. It is this lesson of standing squarely, bravely, and boldly for the right, with perfect confidence in God that the right will win, that I wish to impress upon you — it is the lesson which the very appearance here of this bust will impress upon all of you who know the history — by bringing you almost to the real presence, and telling to you the life-story of that great and noble man whose features and form it portrays, Abraham Lincoln, that honored, loved and martyred President of the Republic, whose ennobling example should be made a part of the life of every boy and girl who enters the portals of our American public schools. Sandy, Utah. THE RESURRECTION "Tell us, Mary, what you see on the way?" " I see the sepulchre of the living Christ, and the glory of the resurrection." "To know One risen from the dead, to feel the life once reaching only a handful of folk on a strip of land by the Mediterranean, now filling the world and leading men everywhere is to know that as surely as spring follows winter, so surely does life follow death."