is memorable day. Everett's oration
was a finished literary production. Smooth, euphonious, and elegant, it
was delivered with the silvery tones and the graceful gestures of a
trained and consummate speaker. When he had finished, and the applause
that greeted him had died away, the multitude called vociferously for an
address from Lincoln. With an unconscious air, the President came
forward at the call, put his spectacles on his nose, and read, in a
quiet voice which gradually warmed with feeling, while his careworn face
became radiant with the light of genuine emotion, the following brief
address:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field as a final resting-place of those who here gave their
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated
it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note nor long remember what we _say_ here, but it can never
forget what they _did_ here. It is for us, the living, rather, to
be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.

The simple and sublime words of this short address shook the hearts of
the listeners, and before the first sentence was ended they were under
the spell of a mighty magician. They stood hushed, awed, and melted, as
the speaker enforced the solemn lesson of the hour, and brought home