"Gentlemen," he had said of an earlier
effort, "Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine was
probably carefully prepared. I ADMIT THAT IT WAS."
The story, too, was a weapon of attack and defense for this
master fabulist. Sometimes it was a readier mode of argument than
any syllogism; sometimes it gave him, like the traditional
diplomatist's pinch of snuff, an excuse for pausing while he
studied his adversary or made up his own mind; sometimes, with
the instinct of a poetic soul, he invented a parable and gravely
gave it a historic setting "over in Sangamon County." For
although upon his intellectual side the man was a subtle and
severe logician, on his emotional side he was a lover of the
concrete and human. He was always, like John Bunyan, dreaming and
seeing "a man" who symbolized something apposite to the occasion.
Thus even his invented stories aided his marvelous capacity for
statement, for specific illustration of a general law. Lincoln's
destiny was to be that of an explainer, at first to a local
audience in store or tavern or courtroom, then to upturned
serious faces of Illinois farmers who wished to hear national
issues made clear to them, then to a listening nation in the
agony of civil war, and ultimately to a world which looks to
Lincoln as an exponent and interpreter of the essence of
democracy.
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