illness on the field of Gettysburg. The soldier's voice broke it.
"It's a wonderful speech," he said. "There's nothing finer. Other men
have spoken stirring words, for the North and for the South, but never
before, I think, with the love of both breathing through them. It is
only the greatest who can be a partisan without bitterness, and only
such to-day may call himself not Northern or Southern, but American.
To feel that your enemy can fight you to death without malice, with
charity--it lifts country, it lifts humanity to something worth dying
for. They are beautiful, broad words and the sting of war would be
drawn if the soul of Lincoln could be breathed into the armies. Do
you agree with me?" he demanded abruptly, and Lincoln answered slowly,
from a happy heart.

"I believe it is a good speech," he said.

The impetuous Southerner went on: "Of course, it's all wrong from
my point of view," and the gentleness of his look made the words
charming. "The thought which underlies it is warped, inverted, as I
look at it, yet that doesn't alter my admiration of the man and of his
words. I'd like to put my hand in his before I die," he said, and the
sudden, brilliant, sweet smile lit the transparency of his face like
a lamp; "and I'd like to tell him that I know that what we're all
fighting for, the best of us, is the right of our country as it is
given us to see it." He was laboring a bit with the words now as if
he were tired, but he hushed the boy imperiously. "When a man gets so
close to death's door that he feels the wind through it from a larger
atmosphere, then the small things are blown away. The bitterness
of the fight has faded for me. I only feel the love of country, the
satisfaction of giving my life for it. The speech--that speech--has
made it look higher and simpler--your side as well as ours. I would
like to put my hand in Abraham Lincoln's--"

The clear, deep voice, with its hesitations, its catch of weakness,
stopped short. Convulsively the hand shot out and caught at the great
fingers that hung near him, pulling the President, with the strength
of agony, to his knees by the cot. The prisoner was writhing in an
attack of mortal pain, while he held, unknowing that he held it, the
hand of his new friend in a torturing grip. The door of death had
opened wide and a stormy wind was carrying the bright, conquered
spirit into that larger atmosphere of which he had spoken. Suddenly
the struggle ceased, the unconsci