mean not only artists, such as are named in this chapter, but dreamers
and workers like Johnny Appleseed, or Abraham Lincoln. The best account
of Johnny Appleseed is in Harper's Monthly for November, 1871. People do
not know Abraham Lincoln till they have visited the grave of Anne
Rutledge, at Petersburg, Illinois, then New Old Salem a mile away. New
Old Salem is a prophet's hill, on the edge of the Sangamon, with lovely
woods all around. Here a brooding soul could be born, and here the
dreamer Abraham Lincoln spent his real youth. I do not call him a dreamer
in a cheap and sentimental effort to describe a man of aspiration.
Lincoln told and interpreted his visions like Joseph and Daniel in the
Old Testament, revealing them to the members of his cabinet, in great
trials of the Civil War. People who do not see visions and dream dreams
in the good Old Testament sense have no right to leadership in America. I
would prefer photoplays filled with such visions and oracles to the state
papers written by "practical men." As it is, we are ruled indirectly by
photoplays owned and controlled by men who should be in the shoe-string
and hook-and-eye trade. Apparently their digestions are good, they are in
excellent health, and they keep out of jail.