of yesterday in the papers?"

Lincoln gave him an odd look. "No," he said, "I haven't."

"Sit down," Blair commanded. "Don't grudge a few minutes to 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 thro