THEODORE ROOSEVELT CYCLOPEDIA
A
ABBEY THEATRE. In the Abbey Theatre Lady
Gregory and those associated with her . . . have not only
made an extraordinary contribution to the sum of Irish
literary and artistic achievement, but have done more
for the drama than has been accomplished in any other
nation of recent years. England, Australia, South
Africa, Hungary, and Germany are all now seeking to
profit by this unique achievement. The Abbey Theatre
is one of the healthiest signs of the revival of the
ancient Irish spirit which has been so marked a feature
of the world's progress during the present generation;
and, like every healthy movement of the kind, it has
been thoroughly national and has developed on its own
lines, refusing merely to copy what has been outworn.
It is especially noteworthy, and is a proof of the general
Irish awakening, that this vigorous expression of Irish
life, so honorable to the Irish people, should represent
the combined work of so many different persons, and
not that of only one person, whose activity might be
merely sporadic and fortuitous. (Outlook , December 16,
1911.) Mem. Ed. XIV, 402; Nat. Ed. XII, 317.
ABBOTT, LYMAN. Dr. Abbott is one of those men
whose work and life give strength to all who believe in
this country, and hearten them in the effort to strive
after better things. He has known how to combine to a
very unusual degree a series of qualities, all of them
necessary but by no means all often developed in the
same individual. Exactly as in his writings he stands
fearlessly for the rights of the laboring man and yet is
equally fearless in his denunciation of any kind of mob
violence or of attack on property; exactly as he
unsparingly assails every corrupt politician and yet
avoids the pit of mere slanderous accusation against all
men in public life; so in his private character he
combines a good-natured evenness of temper with the
power of flaming wrath against unrighteousness,
insistence upon adherence to a high ideal with ready
recognition of the need of practical methods in the
achievement of that ideal, and a serene and lofty hope-
fulness and belief in the future with a keen appreciation
of all that is low, base, cruel, evil, and therefore
mercilessly to be warred against in the present. (To
Hamilton Wright Mabie, December 6, 1905.) Outlook,
December 18, 1905, p. 16.
ABOLITIONISTS. Owing to a variety of causes, the
Abolitionists have received an immense amount of
hysterical praise, which they do not deserve, and have
been credited with deeds done by other men, whom
they in reality hampered and opposed rather than aided.
After 1840 the professed Abolitionists formed but a
small and comparatively unimportant portion of the
forces that were working towards the restriction and
ultimate destruction of slavery; and much of what they
did was positively harmful to the cause for which they
were fighting. Those of their number who considered
the Constitution as a league with death and hell, and
who therefore advocated a dissolution of the Union,
acted as rationally as would antipolygamists nowadays
if, to show their disapproval of Mormonism, they
should advocate that Utah should be allowed to form a
separate nation. The only hope of ultimately
suppressing slavery lay in the preservation of the
Union, and every Abolitionist who argued or signed a
petition for its dissolution was doing as much to
perpetuate the evil he complained of as if he had been a
slave-holder. (1887.) Mem. Ed. VIII, 216; Nat. Ed. VII,
187.
ABOLITIONISTS — CHARACTER AND
INFLUENCE OF. Their courage, and for the most part
their sincerity, cannot be too highly spoken of, but their
share in abolishing slavery was far less than has
commonly been represented; any single non-abolitionist
politician, like Lincoln or Seward, did more than all the
professional Abolitionists combined really to bring
about its destruction. . . . Many of their leaders
possessed no good qualities beyond their fearlessness
and truth—qualities that were also possessed by the
Southern fire-eaters. They belonged to that class of men
that is always engaged in some agitation or other; only
it happened that in this particular agitation they were
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