There the grave of the Great One wuz onmarked by even a decent memorial, let alone the great one they said they would raise.
And when the Great Ones of the Old World—the renowned in Song and Story and History—when they ariv in New York, most their first thoughts wuz to visit the Grand Tomb of our Hero—
The one who their rulers had delighted to honor—the one who had been welcomed in the dazzlin' halls of their Kings. And them halls had felt honored to have his shadow rest on 'em as he passed through 'em to audiences with royalty.
They journeyed to that tomb. Some on 'em had been used to stand by the tombs of their own great dead under the magestic aisles of Westminster Abbey, whose lofty glories dwarfs the human form almost to a pigmy.
Some had stood by the white marble poem of the Tag Megal in India, wherein a royal soul has carved his love for a woman. If that race, to whom we send missionaries to civilize them, could raise such a tomb over its dead, and a woman too, who had done no great things, only loved the man who raised this incomparable monument over her—what could they expect to find raised by this great and dominant race over the dead form of the man who had saved the hull country from ruin?
So with feelin's of awe and wonder in their hearts, expectin' to see they knew not what, the awestruck, admirin' foreigner paused before the tomb of the Great Leader—and he see nothin'. Not even a respectable grave-stun, such as you see in any New England graveyard. (Or that has been the case till very lately. But now things look a little brighter in the monument line.)
But it has been a shame, and a burnin' one, so burnin' that it has seemed to me that it would take all the cool blue waters that glide along below, a-complainin' of the slight and insult to our Hero—it would take more than all these waters to wash it out and make the country clean agin.
But she had one of her spells, and whether she wuz well or whether she wuz sick, New York lied jest like a dog about it.
Whether she wuz crazy or not, the fact remained that she had bragged, and then gin out; had promised, and not performed.
I believe she wuz out of her head.