Told him all; how her child's erring father
Had broken the laws.

Humbly spake she: "I mourn for his folly,
His weakness, his fall";
Proudly spake she: "he is not a TRAITOR,
And I love him through all!"

Then the great man, whose heart had been shaken
By a little babe's cry;
Answered soft, taking counsel of mercy,
"This man shall not die!"

Why, he heard from the dungeons, the rice-fields,
The dark holds of ships;
Every faint, feeble cry which oppression
Smothered down on men's lips.

In her furnace, the centuries had welded
Their fetter and chain;
And like withes, in the hands of his purpose,
He snapped them in twain.

Who can be what he was to the people;
What he was to the State?
Shall the ages bring to us another
As good and as great?

Our hearts with their anguish are broken,
Our wet eyes are dim;
For us is the loss and the sorrow,
The triumph for him!

For, ere this, face to face with his Father
Our Martyr hath stood;
Giving into his hand the white record
With its great seal of blood!

That the hand which reached out of the darkness
Hath taken the whole?
Yea, the arm and the head of the people--
The heart and the soul!

And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence
A nation has wept;
Was the truest, and gentlest, and sweetest
A man ever kept!

[Illustration: STATUE OF LINCOLN

By Augustus Saint Gaudens, in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois]

On the 22nd of October, 1887, this statue by Saint Gaudens was
unveiled, Mr. Eli Bates donating $40,000 for that purpose. There is a
vast oval of cut stone, thirty by sixty feet, the interior fashioned
to form a classic bench, and the statue stands on a stone pedestal.
The sculptor represents him as an orator, just risen from his chair,
which is shown behind him, and waiting for the audience to become
quiet before beginning his speech. The attitude is that always assumed
by