Excerpt from The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: As Reflected in His Briefer Letters and Speeches In the following pages an attempt has been made to collect, for the first time, Lincoln's masterpieces of brevity; the brevity which was not only the soul of his Wit, but the sinew of his strength and the heart of his compassion. Lincoln, said the London Spectator, could never tolerate the tyranny of mere words, but always pressed through them to the reality beyond. When Lincoln Spoke he was an orator, never an elocutionist. Said Robert G. Ingersoll, in drawing this distinction. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.