This rusticity
of habit was utterly free from that affected contempt of refinement and
comfort which self-made men sometimes carry into their more affluent
circumstances. To Abraham Lincoln it was entirely natural, and all those
who came into contact with him knew it to be so. In his ways of thinking
and feeling he had become a gentleman in the highest sense, but the
refining process had polished but little the outward form. The plain
people, therefore, still considered "honest Abe Lincoln" one of
themselves; and when they felt, which they no doubt frequently did, that
his thoughts and aspirations moved in a sphere above their own, they were
all the more proud of him, without any diminution of fellow-feeling. It
was this relation of mutual sympathy and understanding between Lincoln
and the plain people that gave him his peculiar power as a public man,
and singularly fitted him, as we shall see, for that leadership which was
preeminently required in the great crisis then coming on,--the leadership
which indeed thinks and moves ahead of the masses, but always remains
within sight and sympathetic touch of them.
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