l, North or South,
but a winged emissary of fate, flown from the shadows of the mystic
world, which AEschylus and Shakespeare created and consecrated to
tragedy!

I sometimes wonder shall we ever attain a journalism sufficiently
upright in its treatment of current events to publish fully and fairly
the utterances of our public men, and, except in cases of provable
dishonor, to leave their motives and their personalities alone?

Reading just what Abraham Lincoln did say and did do, it is
inconceivable how such a man could have aroused antagonism so bitter and
abuse so savage, to fall at last by the hand of an assassin.

We boast our superior civilization and our enlightened freedom of
speech; and yet, how few of us--when a strange voice begins to utter
unfamiliar or unpalatable things--how few of us stop and ask ourselves,
may not this man be speaking the truth after all? It is so easy to call
names. It is so easy to impugn motives. It is so easy to misrepresent
opinions we cannot answer. From the least to the greatest what creatures
we are of party spirit, and yet, for the most part, how small its aims,
how imperfect its instruments, how disappointing its conclusions!

One thinks now that the world in which Abraham Lincoln lived might have
dealt more gently by such a man. He was himself so gentle--so upright in
nature and so broad of mind--so sunny and so tolerant in temper--so
simple and so unaffected in bearing--a rude exterior covering an
undaunted spirit, proving by his every act and word that--

"The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring."

Though he was a party leader, he was a typical and patriotic American,
in whom even his enemies might have found something to respect and
admire. But it could not be so. He committed one grievous offense; he
dared to think and he was not afraid to speak; he was far in advance of
his party and his time; and men are slow to forgive what they do not
readily understand.

Yet, all the while that the waves of passion were dashing over his
sturdy figure, reared above the dead-level, as a lone oak upon a sandy
beach, not one harsh word rankled in his heart to sour the milk of human
kindness that, like a perennial spring from the gnarled roots of some
majestic tree, flowed within him. He would smooth over a rough place in
his official intercourse with a funny story fitting the case in point,
and they called him a trifler. He would round off a logical argument