ir future callings, ought forever to command the
admiration of this people: Lincoln, the lowly, the exalted, the pure
man in rude marble, the plain cover to a gentle nature, the giant frame
and noble intellect; Grant, the defender of the Federal Union, the
unflinching soldier, around whose dying couch a whole nation now
lingers, whose light will shine down through future ages a warning to
conspirators, to freemen a pledge, and to the oppressed a beacon of
hope; Stanton, the lion of Buchanan's cabinet, the collaborator of
Lincoln, the supporter of Grant, gifted with the far-seeing eye of a
Carnot, spotless in character, incorruptible in integrity, great in
talent and learning, and a fit object of unhesitating trust; and John
Rogers, the American sculptor, who has offered, in his beautiful and
famous group of statuary, "The Council of War," an undying tribute to
these three great leaders in American history, and is himself worthy
to be grouped with them in our remembrance.

"Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all--
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!"

If we could have looked into a rude log-cabin in Hardin county,
Kentucky, on the morning of the 12th of February, 1809, we should have
seen an infant just born,--and with what promise of future greatness?
Looking ahead ten years, we should have discerned this infant, Abraham,
developing into youth, still living in the old log-cabin, with neither
doors nor windows, with wolves and bears for neighbors, with a shiftless
father. But his mother was dead! Still this mother had left her impress,
and she had become in that boy's heart "an angel of a mother." She made
him what he afterwards proved himself to be. Follow Abraham Lincoln
where we will,--from the cradle to the grave,--and we shall find honesty
and kindness ever distinguishing him. In his boyhood, among boys, he was
always fighting the battle of the offended and the weak; in manhood, he
was always protecting the fugitive from an angry mob; as a lawyer,
saving the widow's son from the gallows, and declining the rich fee of
an unrighteous cause; as a public debater, the fairest ever met in the
political arena; and as president of the republic, honest in his
convictions and kind to his bitterest enemies.

Let us not forget the difficulties which it was his lot and his good
fortune to surmount. He never was six months at school in