After his resignation as Marshal, he resumed the practice of law in company with Hon. Jeremiah S. Black and his son, Chauncey F. Black.
Broken in health and in fortune, he went to Colorado in 1879, where he remained seven years. It was here that the beautiful friendship began between Colonel Lamon and Eugene Field. This friendship meant much to both of them. To Eugene Field, then one of the editors of the Denver "Tribune," who had only a boyhood recollection of Lincoln, it meant much to study the history of the War and the martyred President with one who had seen much of both. To Colonel Lamon it was a solace and a tonic, this association with one in whom sentiment and humor were so delicately blended.
One little incident of this friendship is worth the telling because of the pathetic beauty of the verses which it occasioned.
One day when Field dropped in to see Lamon he found him asleep on the floor. (To take a nap on the floor was a habit of both Lamon and Lincoln, perhaps because they both experienced difficulty in finding lounges suited to their length—Lamon was six feet two inches, Lincoln two inches taller.) Field waited some time thinking Lamon would wake up, but he did not; so finally Field penciled the following verses on a piece of paper, pinned it to the lapel of Lamon's coat, and quietly left:—
As you, dear Lamon, soundly slept
And dreamed sweet dreams upon the floor,
Into your hiding place I crept
And heard the music of your snore.
A man who sleeps as now you sleep,
Who pipes as music'ly as thou—
Who loses self in slumbers deep
As you, O happy man, do now,
Must have a conscience clear and free
From troublous pangs and vain ado;
So ever may thy slumbers be—
So ever be thy conscience too!
And when the last sweet sleep of all
Shall smooth the wrinkles from thy brow,
May God on high as gently guard
Thy slumbering soul as I do now.
This incident occurred in the summer of 1882. Eleven years after Colonel Lamon lay dying. He was conscious to the last moment, but for the last sixteen hours he had lost the power of speech. His daughter watched him for those sixteen hours, hoping every moment he would be able to speak. She was so stunned during this long watch that she could not utter a prayer to comfort her father's soul, but just before the end came, the last lines of the little poem came to her like an inspiration which she repeated aloud to her dying father:
And when the last sweet sleep of all
Shall smooth the wrinkles from thy brow,
May God on high as gently guard
Thy slumbering soul as I do now.