mechanics or business-better than those around him is the man who will succeed.

"And the only way to acquire knowledge is to labor. There is no substitute for it. The best time to get it is when you are young. Proxies are not recognized, either in the intellectual or business conflicts of the present day. To use a homely but expressive phrase, 'You must hoe your own row.'

"Don't try to master too many things. A few things of which you are thoroughly master give you better equipment for life's struggles than a whole arsenal of half-mastered and half-matured things. You belong to a great race and a great age, and you are citizens of the greatest country on the face of the earth. Every opportunity is open to you as it is to me, and to every citizen, as they have never been opened in any other quarter of the globe. Here is absolute equality of opportunity and of advantage, and those who can win must do so by force and their own merit; and here what you win you can wear.

The Jewish people have for centuries been conspicuous in almost every department of life. In music they have taken the highest rank as composers and performers. Mendelssohn, Rubenstein, and Joachim have few equals. As actors they had Rachael and Bernhardt and a long list beside, who have been recognized as stars the world over. Among the philosophers is to be named the great Spinoza; in medicine, Franke; in Greek literature, Bernays; while Benfrey was the first of Sanscrit

scholars; Ricardo, conspicuous in political economy, and Sir Moses Montefiore, the great philanthropist, who died full of honors, a century old, whose memory is cherished the world over. His intellectual and physical faculties were marvelous. He retained his mental faculties until the last. After he was eighty years old, in the interest of his race and humanity,

he made four great journeys; two to Jerusalem, one to Roumania, and one to Russia. He was always doing good.

"I observe from your souvenir that here in this institution you sacredly observe his memory. He was broad-minded, not bigoted, loving his race and believing in it, and yet helping Gentile as well as Jew. He contributed to build Protestant churches and 'found hospitals for the Turk and the Catholic, and assisted in every way to the elevation of all races and all colors of men. George Eliot, writing a few years ago about the Jewish race, and, as indicating the rank they had already taken, said: 'At this moment the leader of the Liberal party in Germany is a Jew; the leader of the Republican party in France is a Jew, and the leader of the Conservative party in England is a Jew.' Our own country can furnish a long list of useful and conspicuous men of your race -merchants and bankers, philanthropists and patriots, physicians and lawyers, authors and orators and editors, teachers and preachers-all of them furnishing the young people of this Jewish orphan asylum worthy models to excite their ambition to become worthy successors

THE CHARACTER AND TRAINING OF ABRAHAM

LINCOLN.

[February 12th, 1895, at Albany, N. Y.]

"We meet to-night to do honor to one whose achievements have heightened human aspirations and broadened the field of opportunity to the races of men. While the party with which we stand, and for which he stood, can justly claim him, and with-. out dispute can boast the distinction of being the first to honor and trust him, his fame has leaped the bounds of party and country, and now belongs to mankind and the ages.

"What were the traits of character which made him leader and master, without a rival, in the greatest crisis in our history? What gave him such mighty power? Lincoln had sublime faith in the people. He walked with and among them. He recognized the importance and power of enlightened public sentiment, and was guided by it. Even amid the vicissitudes of war he concealed little from the public review and inspection. In all he did he invited rather than evaded examination and criticism. He submitted his plans and purposes, as far as practicable, to public consideration with perfect frankness and sincerity. There was such homely simplicity in his character that it could not he hedged in by the pomp of place nor the ceremonials of high official station,

He was so accessible to the public that he seemed to take the whole people into his confidence.

Here, perhaps, was one secret of his power. The people never lost their confidence in him, however much they unconsciously added to his personal discomfort and trials. His patience was almost superhuman. And who will say that he was mistaken in his treatment of the thousands who thronged continually about them? More than once, when reproached for permitting visitors to crowd upon him, he asked, with pained surprise, 'Why, what harm does this confidence in men do me?' Horace Greeley once said: 'I doubt whether man, woman, or child, white or black, bond or free, virtuous or vicious, ever accosted or reached forth a hand to Abraham Lincoln and detected in his countenance or manner any repugnance or shrinking from the proffered contact, any assumption of superiority or betrayal of disdain.' Bancroft, the historian, alluding to this characteristic, which was never so conspicuously manifested as during the darker hours of the war, beautifully illustrated it in these memorable words: As a child, in a dark night, on a rugged way, catches hold of the hand of its father for guidance and support, Lincoln clung fast to the hand of the people and moved calmly through the gloom.'

"His earliest public utterances were marked by this confidence. On March 9th, 1832, when announcing himself a candidate for Representative, he said that he felt it his duty to make known to the people

his sentiments upon the questions of the day. 'Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition,' he observed, and whether it be true or not I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relatives or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the county. But if the good people in

their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointment to be very much chagrined.'

"In this remarkable address, made when he was only twenty-three, the main elements of Lincoln's character and the qualities which made his great career possible are revealed with startling distinctness. We see therein that brave old wisdom of sincerity,' that oneness in feeling with the common people, and that supreme confidence in them which formed the foundation of his political faith.

"Among the statesmen of America Lincoln is the true democrat, and-Franklin, perhaps, exceptedthe first great one. He had no illustrious ancestry, no inherited place or wealth, and none of the pres tige, power, training, or culture which were assured to the gentry or landed classes of our own colonial