elt the grinding shock and did not reel,
And, ah, your hand that cut the battle's path
Wide with the devastating plague of wrath,
Your bleeding hand, gentle with pity yet,
Did not forget
To bless, to succor, and to heal.

[Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN

Photograph by Alexander Gardner, Washington, D. C., 1864]

Wilbur Dick Nesbit was born at Xenia, Ohio, September 16, 1871.
Educated in the public schools at Cedarville, Ohio. Was printer and
reporter on various Ohio and Indiana papers until 1898; verse writer
and paragrapher _Baltimore American_, 1899-1902; since that year
writer of verse and humor _Chicago Evening Post_ and other newspapers,
contributor of stories and poems to magazines and periodicals. Author
of _Little Henry's Slate_, 1903; _The Trail to Boyland and Other
Poems_, 1904; _An Alphabet of History_, 1905; _The Gentleman Ragman_,
1906; _A Book of Poems_, 1906; _The Land of Make-Believe and Other
Christmas Poems_, 1907; _A Friend or Two_, 1908; _The Loving Cup_
(compilation), 1909; _The Old, Old Wish_, 1911; _My Company of
Friends_, 1911; _If the Heart be Glad_, 1911; co-author with Otto
Hauerbach of _The Girl of My Dreams_, a musical comedy, 1910.

THE MAN LINCOLN

Not as the great who grow more great
Until from us they are apart--
He walks with us in man's estate;
We know his was a brother heart.
The marching years may render dim
The humanness of other men;
Today we are akin to him
As they who knew him best were then.

Wars have been won by mail-clad hands,
Realms have been ruled by sword-hedged kings,
But he above these others stands
As one who loved the common things;
The common faith of man was his,
The common faith of man he had--
For this today his grave face is
A face half joyous and half sad.

A man of earth! Of earthy stuff,
As honest as the fruitful soil,
Gnarled as the friendly trees, and rough
As hillsides that had known his toil;
Of earthy stuff--let it be told,
For earth-born men rise and reveal
A courage fair as beaten go