The Perfect Tribute | Page 7

a man in
hard luck. I want to tell you about that speech. You're not so busy but
that you ought to know."
"Well, yes," said Lincoln, "perhaps I ought." He took out his watch and
made a quick mental calculation. "It's only a question of going without
my dinner, and the boy is dying," he thought. "If I can give him a little
pleasure the dinner is a small matter." He spoke again. "It's the soldiers

who are the busy men, not the lawyers, nowadays," he said. "I'll be
delighted to spend a half hour with you, Captain Blair, if I won't tire
you."
"That's good of you," the young officer said, and a king on his throne
could not have been gracious in a more lordly yet unconscious way.
"By the way, this great man isn't any relation of yours, is he, Mr.
Lincoln?"
"He's a kind of connection--through my grandfather," Lincoln
acknowledged. "But I know just the sort of fellow he is--you can say
what you want."
"What I want to say first is this: that he yesterday made one of the great
speeches of history."
"What?" demanded Lincoln, staring.
"I know what I'm talking about." The young fellow brought his thin fist
down on the bedclothes. "My father was a speaker--all my uncles and
my grandfather were speakers. I've been brought up on oratory. I've
studied and read the best models since I was a lad in knee-breeches.
And I know a great speech when I see it. And when Nellie--my
sister--brought in the paper this morning and read that to me I told her
at once that not six times since history began has a speech been made
which was its equal. That was before she told me what the Senator
said."
"What did the Senator say?" asked the quiet man who listened.
"It was Senator Warrington, to whom my sister is--is acting as
secretary." The explanation was distasteful, but he went on, carried past
the jog by the interest of his story. "He was at Gettysburg yesterday,
with the President's party. He told my sister that the speech so went
home to the hearts of all those thousands of people that when it was
ended it was as if the whole audience held its breath--there was not a
hand lifted to applaud. One might as well applaud the Lord's Prayer--it
would have been sacrilege. And they all felt it--down to the lowest.
There was a long minute of reverent silence, no sound from all that
great throng--it seems to me, an enemy, that it was the most perfect
tribute that has ever been paid by any people to any orator."
The boy, lifting his hand from his brother's shoulder to mark the effect
of his brother's words, saw with surprise that in the strange lawyer's
eyes were tears. But the wounded man did not notice.

"It will live, that speech. Fifty years from now American schoolboys
will be learning it as part of their education. It is not merely my
opinion," he went on. "Warrington says the whole country is ringing
with it. And you haven't read it? And your name's Lincoln? Warry, boy,
where's the paper Nellie left? I'll read the speech to Mr. Lincoln
myself."
The boy had sprung to his feet and across the room, and had lifted a
folded newspaper from the table. "Let me read it, Carter--it might tire
you."
The giant figure which had crouched, elbows on knees, in the shadows
by the narrow hospital cot, heaved itself slowly upward till it loomed at
its full height in air. Lincoln turned his face toward the boy standing
under the flickering gas-jet and reading with soft, sliding inflections the
words which had for twenty-four hours been gall and wormwood to his
memory. And as the sentences slipped from the lad's mouth, behold, a
miracle happened, for the man who had written them knew that they
were great. He knew then, as many a lesser one has known, that out of
a little loving-kindness had come great joy; that he had wrested with
gentleness a blessing from his enemy.
"'Fourscore and seven years ago,'" the fresh voice began, and the face
of the dying man stood out white in the white pillows, sharp with
eagerness, and the face of the President shone as he listened as if to
new words. The field of yesterday, the speech, the deep silence which
followed it, all were illuminated, as his mind went back, with new
meaning. With the realization that the stillness had meant, not
indifference, but perhaps, as this generous enemy had said, "The most
perfect tribute ever paid by any people to any orator," there came to
him a rush of glad strength to bear the burdens of the nation. The boy's
tones