I believed the healthy, powerful youth and frontiersman, the lover, lawyer of spotless record, legislator, the thrice candidate for President, had been falsely drawn. I believed if properly seen and truly read, the compelling and enduring greatness of the man would be found written in his actions, in his figure, in his deportment, in his face, and that some of this compelling greatness might be gotten into the stone. To do this, I read all or nearly all he had written, his own description of himself, the few immediate records of his coming and going. I then took the life mask, learned it by heart, measured it in every possible way—for it is infallible—then returned to the habits of his mind, which his writings gave me, and I recognized that five or six of the photographs indicated the man.
Whether Lincoln sat or stood, his was the ease of movement of a figure controlled by direct and natural development, without a hint of consciousness. Chairs were low for him and so Lincoln seemed when he sat down to go farther than was quite easy or graceful. His walk was free and he moved with a long but rather slow swinging stride. His arms hung free, and he walked with an open hand. He was erect; he did not stoop at the shoulders. He bent forward, but from the waistline. His face was large in its simple masses. His head was normal in size; his forehead high, regular and ideal in shape. His brow bushed and projected like a cliff. His eyebrows were very strong. His mouth was not coarse or heavy. His right side was determined, developed, ancient. The left side was immature, plain—and physically not impressive.
You will find written in his face literally all the complexness of his nature. We see a dual nature struggling with a dual problem, delivering a single result—to the whole. He was more deeply rooted in the home principles that are keeping us together than any man who was ever asked to make his heart-beat national—too great to become president, except by some extraordinary combination of circumstances.
GUTZON BORGLUM
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Fromentin said of Peter Paul Rubens, one of the greatest masters who ever used brush and paint to interpret human character: “He is systematic, methodical and stern in the discipline of his private life, in the ordering of his work, in the regulating of his intelligence, in a kind of strong and sane wholesomeness of his genius. He is simple, sincere, a model of loyalty to his friends, in sympathy with every one of talent, (and) untiring and resourceful in his encouragement of beginners * * *.” The same might have been said with equal truth and propriety of Theodore Roosevelt.
Of all the great leaders of this country, he was the most typically American. The grief and melancholy that seized him following the death of his first wife drove him into Dakota. Here upon the range he found surcease from sorrow and sufficient time off from his duties as manager of his ranch to write about the West. This work won instant recognition and not only established his place among the literary men of his day but made him the idol of the Great West. The cowboys with whom he rode the night herd liked and admired him, and even the roughnecks soon learned to respect his cool courage and resourcefulness. One encounter with him did not give encouragement to a second.
But he was more than a frontiersman and writer. He represented all that was best in the home, in business and in government. He was energetic, intelligent and purposeful. He had an aim in life and drove hard and steadily toward his goal. His enemies seldom outmaneuvered him and he knew how to strike when a bold stroke was required to accomplish a desired end. His association with men of all types and his keen observation gave him an insight into men that enabled him to distinguish quickly and accurately the spurious from the real. Surface indications or social position had for him little meaning. He would rather associate with an uneducated but quick-witted cowpuncher than with the dull and unimaginative. This accounts for his friendship with men and women in all walks of life. Talent and ability, usefully employed, always had for him a special appeal but he was bored and annoyed by the pretentious commonplace.
He was by instinct and inclination a reformer and sought to improve all that was best in public morals, both spiritually and politically. No man struggling as mightily as he could escape making mistakes, but he was great enough to recognize them and fair enough to seek to rectify any injustice that had resulted. His enthusiasm, zeal and sureness of himself sometimes led him to pursue hopeless and occasionally ill-considered causes that he later had reason to regret, but by the large he was a most useful and inspiring personality.