The capitol was
bigger'n any building in St. Louis, with a great dome and a flag. And
Mr. Miller took us out to see Lincoln's monument. Just when we got
there, two men in overalls came runnin' from the back of the tomb and
said a man--an old soldier--had just killed himself with a knife. So we
ran around and found him lyin' in a lot of blood. The men came back and
took a bottle of whisky out of his pocket, and a writing which said that
the prohibition party had been defeated, and if it had won he couldn't
have got whisky; and so he killed himself because the prohibition party
had been defeated. And Mitch says, "What a fool idea! If he wanted the
prohibition party defeated, why did he drink and buy whisky; and if he
drank and carried whisky in his pocket, why did he want the prohibition
party to win, and kill himself because it lost? He was crazy, wasn't he,
pa?"

And Mr. Miller said, "Not necessarily--that's sense as things go in the
world. Some people want whisky done away with so they can't get it their
own selves, and when they can't get a law for that, it disappoints 'em,
and they keep on drinkin' because they're disappointed, or kill
themselves because their disappointment is too much. For you can depend
upon it that any man that gets his mind too much fixed on any idea is
like a cross-eyed man killin' a steer with a sledgehammer; he hits whar
he's lookin', and hits wrong. Lincoln had a way of holdin' to an idea
without the idea draggin' him down and away from everything else."

They had carried the dead man off, so we went into the tomb to see the
curiosities. And there was more things than you could see: All kinds of
flags and framed things, pictures and writing and showcases with
pistols, and all sorts of trinkets, bullets, and knives; and a pair of
spectacles which Linkern had wore, and a piece of a rail he had split,
and books he'd read, and a piece of ribbon with his blood on it the
night he died, and a theater program and lots of other things.

Then we went out-doors and looked up at the monument, and it made me
dizzy to see the clouds sail over the top of it. And there was a figure
of Linkern in iron, and of soldiers in iron charging, and horses in
iron; besides mottoes cut in the stone and in iron. Then we went around
to the back again where the old soldier had killed himself. They had the
blood wiped up now. So we looked through the iron bars where a stone
coffin was, but Linkern wasn't in there, Mr. M