Annotation
[1] AD, owned by Meisei University, Tokyo. In 1865, Dr. Samuel H. Melvin, at the time a resident of Springfield, received the manuscript along with the manuscript of the second lecture on the same subject (vide infra, February 11, 1859) from ``aunt Lizzie'' Grimsley (widow of Harrison J. Grimsley and daughter of Dr. John Todd), from the collection of papers which Lincoln had left with her before departing from Springfield in 1861. The manuscript of the second lecture was sold by Dr. Melvin to Charles Gunther, Chicago, Illinois; the first was kept in his own possession. This first lecture was delivered at Bloomington before the Young Men's Association on April 6, 1858, and was reported in the Bloomington Pantagraph, April 9, 1858, sufficiently to establish the precedence of this version over that of the second lecture as revised and delivered on February 11, 1859.
[2] Lincoln deletes ``examples,'' inserts ``patterns,'' and deletes the following sentence which stood first in the next paragraph: ``Beavers, and musk-rats, build houses, but they build no better ones now, than they did five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, lay up their winter stocks of provisions; but they do so, no wise better, or less laboriously, than they did at the dawn of creation.''
[3] The following passage has been deleted by Lincoln at this point: ``But let us immagine, for a moment, that all the wheels are locked forever; and we shall at once conclude that the world is num[b]ed. A common jumper, made of hickory poles, with fifty cents worth of labor, would then be worth more than the President's carriage, and even the largest train of Railroad cars in existence. Indeed the Railroad itself would be utterly worthless. That wagon load of wheat which was to have gone to the river to-morrow, can not go; and the barrel of salt which was to have been brought by the return trip, can not come. Aunt Lizzie's pleasure trip to New-York, Boston, and Niagara Falls, is entirely `done for[.]' More particular alusion will hereafter be made to the wheel & axle.''
[4] The manuscript ends abruptly at the top of a page. Probably there was more to the lecture which Lincoln utilized in his revised version (q.v., February 11, 1859, infra).