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Few realize the days, the great historic and esthetic personalities, with him in the centre, we pass'd through. Abraham Lincoln, familiar, our own, an Illinoisian, modern, yet tallying ancient Moses, Joshua, Ulysses, or later Cromwell, and grander in some respects than any of them; Abraham Lincoln, that makes the like of Homer, Plutarch, Shakspere, eligible our day or any day.
Kellogg, the Illinoisian on the House Committee of Thirty-three, Lincoln wrote: "Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over again." He repeated almost the same words to E.B. Washburne, a member of the House.
"Before we finally turn our backs on the last scattered houses of the village, we find both sides of the road lined with ugly worm-fences, which are overtopped by the various species of Helianthus, Thistles, Biennial Gaura, and the Illinoisian Bell-flower with cerulean blossoms, and other tall weeds.
The gifted M'Corkle was already known to her through certain lines quoted by the Senor; and the entire cabin had one evening fled before a larger and more ambitious manuscript of the fair Illinoisian.
"What does Lincoln mean?" he would blankly exclaim, impervious alike to the drollery and to the keen prod concealed within it. In his fancied superiority he sought to patronise and dominate the rude Illinoisian. The case is pathetic. The width and the depth of the chasm which separates the two men in the regard of the American people!
One soon ceases wondering at the tropicality of the Illinoisian imagination. Ali Baba's eye-straining experiences were poor, compared to these every-day realities. The "Open Sesame" in this case has been spoken through the railroad-whistle. Railroads cannot make mines and quarries, and fat soil and bounteous rivers; yet railroads have been the making of Illinois.
"Well, I tried it in the Black Hawk War!" proceeded the Illinoisian, "and I remember one time I grew awful weak in the legs when I heard the bullets whistle around me and saw the enemy in front of me. How my legs carried me forward I cannot now tell, for I thought every minute that I should sink to the ground.
Her decks were packed tight with every sort of gear that would break the force of plunging shot; and a big barge, laden with coal and rammed hay, was lashed to her port side to protect her magazine. Twenty-three picked Illinoisian sharpshooters went aboard; while pistols, muskets, cutlasses, boarding-pikes, and hand grenades were placed ready for instant use.
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