Excerpt from Lincoln's Birthday, Some Memories of a Lincoln Student: Address by the Rev. Joseph Fort Newton, D.D., February 12, 1938 To me that three-day interview was a profound spiritual experience, for which I am grateful to a gracious man no man can touch Lincoln, even indirectly, and remain the same. After much persuasion I induced Rankin to write down what he had confided to me, telling him that What was memory to him was history to a man of my generation; and that he owed it to Lincoln and his wife to make such a record. At last, reluctantly, he agreed to do so, despite the difficulties of his age and infirmity, and the result was a book, for which I wrote an introduction, entitled: Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, by Henry B. Rankin. It had a wide reading, especially in England, because it gave an intimate understanding of Lincoln no other book had given. Also, it included a chapter on Mary Lincoln - the first gallant and chivalrous thing ever written about her. No woman in our history has been treated more cruelly, more brutally, more unkindly. When one recalls how, in her broken later years, she was hounded by a viperous gossip, until she was driven out of her own country, and had to live in Europe, one thinks of the saying of Ed Howe: I am ashamed of us. How strange that such a fate should have been visited upon the wife of Abraham Lincoln! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.