Collecting his colleagues in his room for consultation, his practical common-sense, his thorough knowledge of human nature, made him an overmatch for his compeers, and for any man I have ever known." Lincoln's reputation as an orator was gradually extending beyond the circle of his friends and constituents.

He was gaining notice as a ready and forcible speaker, with shrewd and sensible ideas which he expressed with striking originality and independence.

He was invited to address the Young Men's Lyceum at Springfield, January 27, 1837, and read a carefully prepared paper on "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions," which was afterwards published in the Springfield "Weekly Journal." The address was crude and strained in style, but the feeling pervading it was fervent and honest, and its patriotic sentiment and sound reflection made it effective for the occasion.

A few paragraphs culled from this paper, some of them containing remarkable prophetic passages, afford a clue to the stage of intellectual development which Lincoln had reached at the age of twenty-seven, and an interesting contrast with the terser style of his later years.
In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.

We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.
We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us.