"Now Faithful, speak for thy God, Fear not the wicked's malice nor their rod, And then Faithful declared: "I have set myself against that which has set itself against Him that is higher than the house." And there we have the book of his boyhood, idealized and translated into those memorable, never-dying words: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." And whence came this sentence? In his youth his father was a carpenter. On the plains of Palestine another carpenter's son had said these same things: "A house divided against itself cannot stand," and across the centuries those words had come and hit the soul of another carpenter's son, and looking on the rotten timber of slavery, and the foundations of the house called America, this carpenter's son declared it could not stand divided, and launching his great body, and soul, and brain, against the rotten timber of slavery, this man, the carpenter's son, who came out of Kentucky, pushed the timber out of the house called America, and the idealism that was rampant in his youth became glorified and victorious in his age, and he, the carpenter's son, laid his own body and his blood between the parts of the house and cemented it so that it shall stand forevermore. My friends, another speaker has been given the subject of Lincoln and Democracy. I will not trespass further on your time, but I simply add these closing words, it must be in the realm of the immortals that laughter is permitted, and if it is permitted, to-night Abraham Lincoln is laughing exceedingly. The other day in Congress and the Senate they passed a resolution, calling on the executive to do something with reference to the coal situation, and I suppose that Abraham Lincoln tonight has gone down the corridors of the halls of immortality and found Theodore Roosevelt or some other man like him, and said, "They are still playing the same old game in the States; they are still doing the same old things." In June the States' rights people declared the Federal Government has no right to empty our beer cans. In February the States' rights people declared the Federal Government ought to fill our coal bins, and as one who comes from foreign shores, and who passed from the steerage through this gate of opportunity, I close with this statement to you, my good friends: You need not fear for the future of this Republic, if those who were born here and those who have come here, grasp hand and hand and declare as they look upon the house no longer divided, in the words of Webster, "I too, thank God, I am an American." |