A little before six the morning light began to pale the lamps. The window showed a square of grey cloudy sky, and outside on the porch there was a drip of rain. The faces revealed by the cold dawn were as haggard and yellow as that of the dying man. Wafts of the outer air began to freshen the stuffiness of the little room.
The city was waking up. There came the sound of far-away carts and horses, and a boy in the lane behind the house began to whistle, and then to sing. “When I was young,” he sang—
“When I was young I used to wait
At Magea'n table 'n' hand de plate
An' pais de bottie when he was dry,
An' brush away de blue-tailed fly.”
“It's his song,” Stanton said to himself, and with the air came a rush of strange feelings. He remembered a thousand things, which before had been only a background of which he had been scarcely conscious. The constant kindliness, the gentle healing sympathy, the homely humour which he once thought had irritated but which he now knew had soothed him.... This man had been twined round the roots of every heart. All night he had been in an ecstasy of admiration, but now that was forgotten in a yearning love. The President had been part of his being, closer to him than wife or child. The boy sang—
“But I can't forget, until I die
Ole Massa an' de blue-tailed fly.”
Stanton's eyes filled with hot tears. He had not wept since his daughter died.
The breathing from the bed was growing faint. Suddenly the Surgeon-General held up his hand. He felt the heart and shook his head. “Fetch your mother,” he said to Robert Lincoln. The minister had dropped on his knees by the bedside and was praying.
“The President is dead,” said the Surgeon-General, and at the words it seemed that every head in the room was bowed on the breast.
Stanton took a step forward with a strange appealing motion of the arms. It was noted by more than one that his pale face was transfigured.
“Yesterday he was America's,” he cried. “Our very own. Now he is all the world's.... Now he belongs to the ages.”