an invitation to the good Abraham Lincoln to come
down and visit you?" one thousand little black hands went up with a
shout. Alas, we knew not that at that very hour their beloved
benefactor was lying cold and silent in the East room at Washington! At
Fortress Monroe, on our homeward voyage, the terrible tidings of the
President's assassination pierced us like a dagger, on the wharf. Near
the Fortress poor negro women had hung pieces of coarse black muslin
around every little huckster's tables. "Yes, sah, Fathah Lincum's dead.
Dey killed our bes' fren, but God be libben; dey can't kill Him, I's sho
ob dat." Her simple childlike faith seemed to reach up and grasp the
everlasting arm which had led Lincoln while leading her race "out of the
house of bondage."

Upon our arrival in New York, we found the city draped in black, and
"the mourners going about the streets." When the remains of the murdered
President reached New York they were laid in state in the City Hall for
one day and night, and during that whole night the procession passed the
coffin--never ceasing for a moment. Between three and four o'clock in
the morning I took my family there, that they might see the face of our
beloved martyr, and we had to take our place in a line as far away as
Park Row. It is impossible to give any adequate description of the
funeral--whose like was never seen before or since--when eminent
authors, clergymen, judges and distinguished civilians walked on foot
through streets, shrouded in black to the house tops. The whole journey
to Springfield, Ill., was one constant manifestation of poignant grief.
The people rose in the night, simply to see the funeral train pass by. I
do not wonder that when Emperor Alexander, of Russia (who was himself
afterwards assassinated) heard the tidings of our President's death from
an American Ambassador, he leaped from his chair, and exclaimed, "Good
God, can it be so? He was the noblest man alive."

Thirty-seven years have passed away, and to-day while our nation reveres
the name of Washington, as the Father of his Country; Abraham Lincoln is
the best loved man that ever trod this continent. The Almighty educated
him in His own Providence for his high mission. The "plain people," as
he called them, were his University; the Bible and John Bunyan were his
earliest text-books. Sometimes his familiarity with the Scriptures came
out very amusingly as when a deputation of bankers called on him, to
negotiat