Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Home Economics - Challenge of Home Economics [PAGE 10]

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as at school, and finally made him willing to encourage Lincoln to a certain degree. She saw to it that he was permitted to sit by the fire at night and cover the wooden shovel with essays and arithmetic, which he would shave off so that he could begin again. She sensed the rare qualities in this ungainly boy and read and studied with him, cherishing in every possible way his interest in education and his love of books, and so she created a home for the man who at a time of supreme crisis headed the nation and led it out of its perilous paths. Think what this particular home created by Lincoln's stepmother meant to the world. As you go along a little side path in the beautiful Vigeland Park at Oslo you come upon a bust of Lincoln and the inscription says, "Given by Citizens of North Dakota who are of Scandinavian Descent" As you pass out of Westminster Abbey in London, in a little grassy enclosure you see a statue to Abraham Lincoln, quoting from the Gettysburg address. In one of the books of our generation which has stirred the English-speaking world with its emphasis upon freedom, tolerance and charity, a description is given of a young man killed in South Africa by one of the natives so cruelly mistreated by the modern South African government. The book describes the library of this youne man. whose life was devoted to an effort to achieve friendship between the races. It says, "Jarvis sat there in his son's house. Books, books, books, hundreds of books about Abraham Lincoln. He had not known that so many books had been written abut any one man. One bookcase was full of them." And so this home helped to develop a personality which has left its stamp upon the entire world. I like to think that we shall revert to the old-fashioned standards of right and wrong that existed before we entered into this bewildering modern life. Many of you, and I, myself, remember when there had never been an automobile, a moving picture, a radio, a submarine, or most miraculous of all, an airplane. But no new standards of conduct have been erected with all of these marvelous devices. We might put it this way. If Abraham Lincoln or Abigail Adams were walking on the main street of Boston or New York today they might be puzzled as to how to cross the street Abraham Lincoln would never have seen a red light He might walk on the red light and be killed, but Abraham Lincoln would understand perfectly the answer to some question of right and wrong. When you and I come down to the end of things we shall be asked exactly the same old questions that have been asked of men and women of all time from the beginning down — whether we have done justice and loved mercy and walked humbly with God.

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