twenty years at hull house

greatness, as Lincoln painstakingly made a long effort to understand

the greatness of the people. There was something in the admiration of

Lincoln's contemporaries, or at least of those men who had known

him personally, which was quite unlike even the best of the devotion

and reverent understanding which has developed since. In the first

place, they had so large a fund of common experience; they too had

pioneered in a western country, and had urged the development of

canals and railroads in order that the raw prairie crops might he transported to market; they too had realized that if this last tremendous

experiment in self-government failed here, it would be the disappointment of the centuries, and that upon their ability to organize

self-government in state, county, and town depended the verdict of

history. These men also knew, as Lincoln himself did, that if this tremendous experiment was to come to fruition, it must be brought about

by the people themselves; that there was no other capital fund upon

which to draw. I remember an incident occurring when I was about

fifteen years old, in which the conviction was driven into my mind

that the people themselves were the great resource of the country. My

father had made a little address of reminiscence at a meeting of "the

old settlers of Stephenson County,'' which was held every summer in

the grove beside the mill, relating his experiences in inducing the

farmers of the county to subscribe for stock in the Northwestern Railroad, which was the first to penetrate the county and to make a connection with the Great Lakes at Chicago. Many of the Pennsylvania

German farmers doubted the value of "the whole new-fangled business,'' and had no use for any railroad, much less for one in which they

were asked to risk their hard-earned savings. My father told of his despair in one farmers' community dominated by such prejudice which

did not in the least give way under his argument, but finally melted

under the enthusiasm of a high-spirited German matron who took a

share to be paid for "out of butter and egg money." As he related his

admiration of her, an old woman's piping voice in the audience called

out: "I'm here to-day, Mr. Addams, and I'd do it again if you asked

me." The old woman, bent and broken by her seventy years of toilsome life, was brought to the platform and I was much impressed by my

father's grave presentation of her as "one of the public-spirited pioneers to whose heroic fortitude we are indebted for the development of

this country." 1 remember that I was at that time reading with great