colonies of our neighborhood presented. I remember that I wanted
very much to ask the author himself how far it was reasonable to
expect the same quality of virtue and a similar standard of
conduct from these divers people. I was timidly trying to apply
his method of study to those groups of homesick immigrants
huddled together in strange tenement houses, among whom I seemed
to detect the beginnings of a secular religion or at least of a
wide humanitarianism evolved out of the various exigencies of the
situation; somewhat as a household of children, whose mother is
dead, out of their sudden necessity perform unaccustomed offices
for each other and awkwardly exchange consolations, as children
in happier households never dream of doing. Perhaps Mr. Caird
could tell me whether there was any religious content in this

Faith to each other; this fidelity
Of fellow wanderers in a desert place.

But when tea was over and my opportunity came for a talk with my
host, I suddenly remembered, to the exclusion of all other
associations, only Mr. Caird's fine analysis of Abraham Lincoln,
delivered in a lecture two years before.

The memory of Lincoln, the mention of his name, came like a
refreshing breeze from off the prairie, blowing aside all the
scholarly implications in which I had become so reluctantly
involved, and as the philosopher spoke of the great American "who
was content merely to dig the channels through which the moral life
of his countrymen might flow," I was gradually able to make a
natural connection between this intellectual penetration at Oxford
and the moral perception which is always necessary for the