He lived until there remained nothing for him to do as great as he had done.
What he did was worth living for, worth dying for.
He lived until he stood in the midst of universal
Joy, beneath the outstretched wings of Peace—the foremost man in all the world.
And then the horror came. Night fell on noon. The Savior of the Republic, the breaker of chains, the liberator of millions, he who had "assured freedom to the free," was dead.
Upon his brow Fame placed the immortal wreath, and for the first time in the history of the world a Nation bowed and wept.
The memory of Lincoln is the strongest, tenderest tie that binds all hearts together now, and holds all States beneath a Nation's flag.
XIV.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN—strange mingling of mirth and tears, of the tragic and grotesque, of cap and crown, of Socrates and Democritus, of �?sop and Marcus Aurelius, of all that is gentle and just, humorous and honest, merciful, wise, laughable, lovable and divine, and all consecrated to the use of man; while through all, and over all, were an overwhelming sense of obligation, of chivalric loyalty to truth, and upon all, the shadow of the tragic end.
Nearly all the great historic characters are impossible monsters, disproportioned by flattery, or by calumny deformed. We know nothing of their peculiarities, or nothing but their peculiarities. About these oaks there clings none of the earth of humanity.