What Would Lincoln Do?

摘要

Abraham Lincoln's marble temple in Washington is as familiar as the back of a penny. But the figure enthroned inside will always be above and apart, a demigod-martyr, prophet, scourge and healer rolled into one. That he was killed on Good Friday with hosannas of triumph still echoing in his ears added a religious overtone to the grief of his countrymen and, from the hour of his death, guaranteed that Lincoln could never again fit into the frame of an ordinary man.rnBut he was a man, in ways as familiar as the guy next door. He liked sports, dirty jokes and being the alpha male. He flirted with pretty women and suffered occasional deafness when his wife was talking. He put his feet on the furniture, encouraged his sons to roughhouse and break things, suffered from bad digestion. And he spent a lot of his life thinking about money. Not that he was greedy-quite the opposite-but he had a poor boy's understanding of the fact that money is a powerful tool, the lever that makes ambition possible. "The penniless beginner in the world," he once explained, "labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him."