And gladly wander to and fro,
Till I my Canaan gain;
There is my house and portion fair,
My treasure and my heart are there,
And my abiding home.”
“Please take your title-deed,” he exclaimed. “I want to have the joy I used to have in singing that song. I’d rather sing it with a clear conscience than to own America.”
It was among such people sacrificing themselves for humanity that Lincoln found his great inspiration from the sordid and mean that are ever to be found muckraking at the bottom. The family may be in a good home, safe for its children, but the good home must be in a good community or they are not safe. In fact, we cannot be sure of a good home unless its good community is in a good world. Good people in a good community are of priceless help to a good mother bringing up a good boy, with the biggest meaning of life in the word good.
V. EXPERIENCES IN THE INDIAN WAR
Great events probably have less effect in shaping one’s life than the little incidents that compose them. It seems so with Lincoln.
The confidence and appreciation of his friends (note that it was not his self-seeking aggressiveness) caused him to believe that he should try to become their representative in the state legislature. He was in the midst of this, his first political campaign, which was at the age of twenty-three, when Black Hawk, the Indian warrior, crossed the Mississippi River, April 6, 1832, with his five hundred followers and began what is known as the Black Hawk War.