heart. I
wish to tell you, for I feel that you are my true friend. I loved Ann
Rutledge. She was the daughter of James Rutledge, the founder of our
village and the owner of the mill on the Sangamon. She was a girl of a
loving heart, gentle blood, and her face was lovely. You saw her at the
tavern. I loved her--I loved her very name; and she is dead. It has all
happened since you were here, and I have wished to meet you again and
tell you all. Such things as these make me melancholy. A great darkness
comes down upon me at times, and I am tempted to end all the bright
dream that we call life. But I rise above the temptation. Elder, you
don't know how my heart has had to struggle. I sometimes think of my
poor mother's grave in the timber in Indiana, and I always think of
_her_ grave--Ann Rutledge's--and then it comes over me like a cloud,
that there is no place for me in the world. Do you want to know what I
do in those hours, elder? I repeat a long poem. I have said it over a
hundred times. It was written by some poet who felt as I do. I would
like to repeat it to you, elder. I tell stories--they only make me more
melancholy--but this poem soothes my mind. It makes me feel that other
men have suffered before, and it makes me willing to suffer for others,
and to accept my lot in life, whatever it may be."

"I wish to hear the poem that has so moved you," said the Tunker.

Abraham Lincoln stood up and leaned against the trunk of one of the
giant trees. The sunlight was sifting through the great canopy of
leaves, boughs, and nests overhead, and afar gleamed the prairies like
gardens of the sun. He lifted his long arm, and, with a sad face, said:

"Elder, listen.

"'Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.

"'The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.

"'The infant a mother attended and loved,
The mother that infant's affection who proved,
The husband that mother and infant who blest--
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.

"'[_The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,_
_Shone beauty and pleasure, her triumphs are by;_
_And the memory of thos