Earnestly, with that "capacity for taking infinite pains" which
has been defined as genius, he labored as the hours flew, building
together close-fitted word on word, sentence on sentence. As the
sculptor must dream the statue prisoned in the marble, as the artist
must dream the picture to come from the brilliant unmeaning of his
palette, as the musician dreams a song, so he who writes must have a
vision of his finished work before he touches, to begin it, a
medium more elastic, more vivid, more powerful than any
other--words--prismatic bits of humanity, old as the Pharaohs, new as
the Arabs of the street, broken, sparkling, alive, from the age-long
life of the race. Abraham Lincoln, with the clear thought in his mind
of what he would say, found the sentences that came to him colorless,
wooden. A wonder flashed over him once or twice of Everett's skill
with these symbols which, it seemed to him, were to the Bostonian a
key-board facile to make music, to Lincoln tools to do his labor. He
put the idea aside, for it hindered him. As he found the sword fitted
to his hand he must fight with it; it might be that he, as well as
Everett, could say that which should go straight from him to his
people, to the nation who struggled at his back towards a goal. At
least each syllable he said should be chiselled from the rock of his
sincerity.
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