But his private personal culture, as one [Footnote: Herbert Croly, Lincoln
as more than an American in his "Promise of American Life," pp. 89-99.]
has observed, had no "embarrassing effects," because he shared so
completely and genuinely the amusements and occupations of his
neighborhood. No "taint of bookishness" disturbed the local fellowships
which gave him opportunity to express in "familiar and dramatic form" of
story and illustration his more substantial philosophy and so find for it
the perfect speech. His neighbors called him by homely, affectionate
names, thinking he was entirely one of them--a little more clever, a
little less ambitious in the usual channels of business and enterprise. He
had no "moral strenuousness of the reformer" and no "exclusiveness" of
learning. He "accepted the fabric of traditional American political
thought." He seemed "but the average product," and yet, as this same
writer has said, "at bottom Abraham Lincoln differed as essentially from
the ordinary western American of the middle period as St.
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