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on his way to the War Office, he stopped to give a greeting to a couple of pet goats that waited for his recognition. While thus engaged, one of the party stepped up and said, "Mr. Lincoln, will you allow me to introduce to you two Massachusetts women." He drew himself up to his full height, swept his hand over his face, and said, "Yes, bring them along." We came, and were introduced. He chatted pleasantly until we grew frightened, and begged him not to allow us to intrude upon his time. We felt, it was said, that it would be a great pleasure to shake hands with our honored Chief Magistrate, here, beneath God's open heaven, and on this green grass. "Ah!" said he, waiting a moment, "such a privilege is worth contending for," and then, assuring us of his pleasure to greet the people, he passed on to his laborious tasks. Well has it been said, "No one who approached him, whether as minister or messenger, felt impelled either to stoop or strut in his presence." Edward Everett, after observing his bearing, at Gettysburg, among the Cabinet and foreign ministers, the Governor, and other notables, pronounced him the peer, in deportment, of any one present.

He was an affectionate man. He never forgot a favor or a friend. The men he loved before he was President, he loved even more tenderly after he learned the value of their disinterested affection.

He was a temperance man, and never used intoxicating liquors, or tobacco. After his return from Richmond, we are told, a cask of old whiskey, taken from the cellar of one of the southern grandees, was brought to the

War Office, and opened. He was urged to take it in honor of the occasion. He declined, and thus refused to lend the influence of his name and position to the support of a practice which has wrought such immense mischief in the Army and in the State.

In the poem which he was so fond of repeating, and which he learned when a young man, you discover a key which unlocks many of the mysteries of that marvellous life. There is a charm in them which will repay perusal not only because of their intrinsic beauty, but because when we read them we seem to get near his great and loving heart:

Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid,

And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie.

The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant's affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blessed;
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of Rest.

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne ;
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn;
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap;

The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep;

The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread;
Have faded away, like the grass that we tread.

So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed
That withers away, to let others succeed;

So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, and view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink ;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling:
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.

They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come;
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

They died, ay! they died; we, things that are now,
That walk on the turf that lies over their brow,

And make in their dwellings a transient abode,

Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge,

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death;
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,—
Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

A man that revolved such thoughts in his mind was not likely to be elated by his position or place. There is one more fact which deserves to be mentioned, because it places the last stone upon the monumental pile of his greatness. He took time daily to peruse his Bible, and was often found up at four o'clock in the early morning holding communion with the Father of Lights in his word. Such is the character which America at this time places in her gilded bark of hope, and sends down the current of time to the distant future. Whoever in Europe or Asia or Africa shall behold its heavenenkindling look, will find the face of him whose

"Patient toil

Had robed our cause in victory's light,

"A martyr to the cause of man,

His blood is freedom's eucharist,

And in the World's great hero-list

His name shall lead the van.

"Yea! raised on faith's white wings, unfurled
In heaven's pure light, of him we say :

He fell upon the self-same day

A Greater died to save the world."

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