ndeavored to shoot Seward's son
who guarded the door; but being foiled in this he crushed the young man's
skull with the heavy weapon, and springing over his body dashed at the
emaciated figure of Seward with uplifted dagger. A dozen times he struck
at the face and throat and breast of the almost dying man, and then
thinking he had done his work made rapidly away.

At the same time, linked by Fate in a sort of poetic justice, with the
thought that if one deserved death so did the other, Hate had with surer
aim sent an assassin's bullet home--and Lincoln died.

Weeks passed and the strong vitality that had served Seward in such good
stead did not forsake him. Men of his stamp are hard to kill.

On a beautiful May-day, Seward, so reduced that a woman carried him, was
taken out on the veranda of his house and watched that solid mass of
glittering steel and faded blue that moved through Pennsylvania Avenue in
triumphal march. Sherman with head uncovered rode down to Seward's home,
saluted, and then back to join his goodly company, and many others of
lesser note did the same.

Health and strength came slowly back, and happy was the day when he was
carried to the office of Secretary of State and, propped in his chair,
again began his work. Another President had come, but meet it was that the
Secretary of State should still hold his place.

Seward lived full eleven years after that, seemingly dragging with
unquenched spirit that slashed and broken form. But the glint did not fade
from his eye, nor did the proud head lose its poise.

He died in his office among his books and papers, sane and sensible up to
the very moment when his spirit took its flight.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

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 advanced. 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 the 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, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
--Speech at Getty