In this crucial moment when the real base of his character had been
suddenly revealed--all the passionateness of the forest shadow, the
unfathomable gloom laid so deep at the bottom of his soul--he was
carried through his spiritual eclipse by the loving comprehension of two
fine friends. New Salem was not all of the sort of Clary's Grove. Near
by on a farm, in a lovely, restful landscape, lived two people who
deserve to be remembered, Bowlin Green and his wife. They drew Lincoln
into the seclusion of their home, and there in the gleaming days of
autumn, when everywhere in the near woods flickered downward, slowly,
idly, the falling leaves golden and scarlet, Lincoln recovered his
equanimity.(11) But the hero of Pigeon Creek, of Clary's Grove, did not
quite come hack. In the outward life, to be sure, a day came when the
sunny story-teller, the victor of Jack Armstrong, was once more what
Jack would have called his real self. In the inner life where alone
was his reality, the temper which affliction had revealed to him was
established. Ever after, at heart, he was to dwell alone, facing,
silent, those inscrutable things which to the primitive mind are things
of every day. Always, he was to have for his portion in his real self,
the dimness of twilight, or at best, the night with its stars, "never
glad, confident morning again."




IV. REVELATIONS

From this time during many years almost all the men who saw beyond the
surface in Lincoln have indicated, in one way or another, their vision
of a constant quality. The observers of the surface did not see it.