g and falling. The very earth
was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to
get straight to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping
after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to
tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask
the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous
helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common
griefs belonged to some one in chief; this belonged to all. It was
each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as
if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as
if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else
to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that
they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid
aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased
to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was still. Even avarice
stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and
universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable
institutions, and write his name above their lintels; but no
monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime
sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up
animosities, and in an hour brought a divided people into unity of
grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish. ...

This nation has dissolved--but in tears only. It stands
foursquare, more solid to-day than any pyramid in Egypt. This people
are neither wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery
and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than ever
before. The government is not weakened, it is made stronger. How
naturally and easily were the ranks closed! Another steps forward,
in the hour that the one fell, to take his place and his mantle; and
I avow my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct
of liberty; true to the whole trust that is reposed in him; vigilant
of the Constitution; careful of the laws; wise for liberty, in that
he himself, through his life, has known what it was to suffer from
the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from bitter personal
experiences.

Where could the head of government in any monarchy be smitten down
by the hand of an assassin, and the funds not quiver or fall
one-half of one per cent? After a long period of national
disturbance, after four years of drastic war, after