Abe Lincoln took a book from his pocket, opened it and laid it on his knee.
He read as if asking them the question:
O 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,
Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.
There was a slight pause. Every man's eye was on the gray face bending over the book in the flickering light.
When he began reading the next verse he lifted his eyes from the pages and looked away, farther away than the circle of brown-branched trees. There was, to the men, a suggestion in his tone of an approach to something strange, perhaps forbidding.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered abroad and together be laid.
He paused a moment. Involuntarily several glances were cast toward the leaves lying by the legs at their feet.
He went on:
And the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.