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<h1 id="id00008" style="margin-top: 6em">THE PERFECT TRIBUTE</h1>
<p id="id00011">by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews</p>
<p id="id00012" style="margin-top: 2em">1908</p>
<h2 id="id00013" style="margin-top: 4em">THE PERFECT TRIBUTE</h2>
<p id="id00014" style="margin-top: 2em">On the morning of November 18, 1863, a special train drew out from
Washington, carrying a distinguished company. The presence with them
of the Marine Band from the Navy Yard spoke a public occasion to come,
and among the travellers there were those who might be gathered only
for an occasion of importance. There were judges of the Supreme
Court of the United States; there were heads of departments; the
general-in-chief of the army and his staff; members of the cabinet.
In their midst, as they stood about the car before settling for the
journey, towered a man sad, preoccupied, unassuming; a man awkward and
ill-dressed; a man, as he leaned slouchingly against the wall, of
no grace of look or manner, in whose haggard face seemed to be the
suffering of the sins of the world. Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, journeyed with his party to assist at the consecration,
the next day, of the national cemetery at Gettysburg. The quiet
November landscape slipped past the rattling train, and the
President's deep-set eyes stared out at it gravely, a bit listlessly.
From time to time he talked with those who were about him; from time
to time there were flashes of that quaint wit which is linked, as
his greatness, with his name, but his mind was to-day dispirited,
unhopeful. The weight on his shoulders seemed pressing more heavily
than he had courage to press back against it, the responsibility
of one almost a dictator in a wide, war-torn country came near to
crushing, at times, the mere human soul and body. There was, moreover,
a speech to be made to-morrow to thousands who would expect their
President to say something to them worth the listening of a people
who were making history; something brilliant, eloquent, strong. The
melancholy gaze glittered with a grim smile. He—Abraham Lincoln—the
lad bred in a cabin, tutored in rough schools here and there, fighting
for, snatching at crumbs of learning that fell from rich tables,
struggling to a hard knowledge which well knew its own limitations—it
was he of whom this was expected. He glanced across the car. Edward
Everett sat there, the orator of the following day, the finished
gentleman, the careful student, the heir of traditions of learning
and breeding, of scholarly instincts and resources. The self-made
President gazed at him wistfully. From him the people might expect and
would get a balanced and polished oration. For that end he had been
born, and inheritance and opportunity and inclination had worked
together for that end's perfection. While Lincoln had wrested from a
scanty schooling a command of English clear and forcible always,
but, he feared, rough-hewn, lacking, he feared, in finish and in
breadth—of what use was it for such a one to try to fashion a speech
fit to take a place by the side of Everett's silver sentences? He
sighed. Yet the people had a right to the best he could give, and he
would give them his best; at least he could see to it that the words
were real and were short; at least he would not, so, exhaust their
patience. And the work might as well be done now in the leisure of the
journey. He put a hand, big, powerful, labor-knotted, into first one
sagging pocket and then another, in search of a pencil, and drew out
one broken across the end. He glanced about inquiringly—there was
nothing to write upon. Across the car the Secretary of State had just
opened a package of books and their wrapping of brown paper lay on
the floor, torn carelessly in a zigzag. The President stretched a long
arm.</p>
<p id="id00015">"Mr. Seward, may I have this to do a little writing?" he asked, and
the Secretary protested, insisting on finding better material.</p>
<p id="id00016">But Lincoln, with few words, had his way, and soon the untidy stump
of a pencil was at work and the great head, the deep-lined face, bent
over Seward's bit of brown paper, the whole man absorbed in his task.</p>
<p id="id00017">Earnestly, with that "capacity for taking infinite pains" which
has been defined as genius, he labored as the hours flew, building
together close-fitted word on word, sentence on sentence. As the
sculptor must dream the statue prisoned in the marble, as the artist
must dream the picture to come from the brilliant unmeaning of his
palette, as the musician dreams a song, so he who writes must have a
vision of his finished work before he touches, to begin it, a
medium more elastic, more vivid, more powerful than any
other—words—prismatic bits of humanity, old as the Pharaohs, new as
the Arabs of the street, broken, sparkling, alive, from the age-long
life of the race. Abraham Lincoln, with the clear thought in his mind
of what he would say, found the sentences that came to him colorless,
wooden. A wonder flashed over him once or twice of Everett's skill
with these symbols which, it seemed to him, were to the Bostonian a
key-board facile to make music, to Lincoln tools to do his labor. He
put the idea aside, for it hindered him. As he found the sword fitted
to his hand he must fight with it; it might be that he, as well as
Everett, could say that which should go straight from him to his
people, to the nation who struggled at his back towards a goal. At
least each syllable he said should be chiselled from the rock of his
sincerity. So he cut here and there an adjective, here and there a
phrase, baring the heart of his thought, leaving no ribbon or flower
of rhetoric to flutter in the eyes of those with whom he would be
utterly honest. And when he had done he read the speech and dropped
it from his hand to the floor and stared again from the window. It was
the best he could do, and it was a failure. So, with the pang of the
workman who believes his work done wrong, he lifted and folded the
torn bit of paper and put it in his pocket, and put aside the thought
of it, as of a bad thing which he might not better, and turned and
talked cheerfully with his friends.</p>
<p id="id00018">At eleven o'clock on the morning of the day following, on November 19,
1863, a vast, silent multitude billowed, like waves of the sea, over
what had been not long before the battle-field of Gettysburg. There
were wounded soldiers there who had beaten their way four months
before through a singing fire across these quiet fields, who had
seen the men die who were buried here; there were troops, grave and
responsible, who must soon go again into battle; there were the rank
and file of an everyday American gathering in surging thousands; and
above them all, on the open-air platform, there were the leaders of
the land, the pilots who to-day lifted a hand from the wheel of the
ship of state to salute the memory of those gone down in the storm.
Most of the men in that group of honor are now passed over to the
majority, but their names are not dead in American history—great
ghosts who walk still in the annals of their country, their
flesh-and-blood faces were turned attentively that bright, still
November afternoon towards the orator of the day, whose voice held the
audience.</p>
<p id="id00019">For two hours Everett spoke and the throng listened untired,
fascinated by the dignity of his high-bred look and manner almost as
much, perhaps, as by the speech which has taken a place in literature.
As he had been expected to speak he spoke, of the great battle, of
the causes of the war, of the results to come after. It was an oration
which missed no shade of expression, no reach of grasp. Yet there
were those in the multitude, sympathetic to a unit as it was with the
Northern cause, who grew restless when this man who had been crowned
with so thick a laurel wreath by Americans spoke of Americans as
rebels, of a cause for which honest Americans were giving their lives
as a crime. The days were war days, and men's passions were inflamed,
yet there were men who listened to Edward Everett who believed that
his great speech would have been greater unenforced with bitterness.</p>
<p id="id00020">As the clear, cultivated voice fell into silence, the mass of people
burst into a long storm of applause, for they knew that they had heard
an oration which was an event. They clapped and cheered him again and
again and again, as good citizens acclaim a man worthy of honor
whom they have delighted to honor. At last, as the ex-Governor of
Massachusetts, the ex-ambassador to England, the ex-Secretary of
State, the ex-Senator of the United States—handsome, distinguished,
graceful, sure of voice and of movement—took his seat, a tall, gaunt
figure detached itself from the group on the platform and slouched
slowly across the open space and stood facing the audience. A stir
and a whisper brushed over the field of humanity, as if a breeze
had rippled a monstrous bed of poppies. This was the President. A
quivering silence settled down and every eye was wide to watch this
strange, disappointing appearance, every ear alert to catch the first
sound of his voice. Suddenly the voice came, in a queer, squeaking
falsetto. The effect on the audience was irrepressible, ghastly.
After Everett's deep tones, after the strain of expectancy, this
extraordinary, gaunt apparition, this high, thin sound from the huge
body, were too much for the American crowd's sense of humor, always
stronger than its sense of reverence. A suppressed yet unmistakable
titter caught the throng, ran through it, and was gone. Yet no one
who knew the President's face could doubt that he had heard it and
had understood. Calmly enough, after a pause almost too slight to be
recognized, he went on, and in a dozen words his tones had gathered
volume, he had come to his power and dignity. There was no smile now
on any face of those who listened. People stopped breathing rather,
as if they feared to miss an inflection. A loose-hung figure, six
feet four inches high, he towered above them, conscious of and
quietly ignoring the bad first impression, unconscious of a charm of
personality which reversed that impression within a sentence. That
these were his people was his only thought. He had something to say to
them; what did it matter about him or his voice?</p>
<p id="id00021">"Fourscore and seven years ago," spoke the President, "our fathers
brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we
are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on
a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
it as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that
that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we
should do this.</p>
<p id="id00022">"But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,
we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of
the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the
earth."</p>
<p id="id00023">There was no sound from the silent, vast assembly. The President's
large figure stood before them, at first inspired, glorified with the
thrill and swing of his words, lapsing slowly in the stillness into
lax, ungraceful lines. He stared at them a moment with sad eyes full
of gentleness, of resignation, and in the deep quiet they stared at
him. Not a hand was lifted in applause. Slowly the big, awkward man
slouched back across the platform and sank into his seat, and yet
there was no sound of approval, of recognition from the audience; only
a long sigh ran like a ripple on an ocean through rank after rank. In
Lincoln's heart a throb of pain answered it. His speech had been, as
he feared it would be, a failure. As he gazed steadily at these his
countrymen who would not give him even a little perfunctory applause
for his best effort, he knew that the disappointment of it cut into
his soul. And then he was aware that there was music, the choir was
singing a dirge; his part was done, and his part had failed.</p>
<p id="id00024">When the ceremonies were over Everett at once found the President.
"Mr. President," he began, "your speech—" but Lincoln had
interrupted, flashing a kindly smile down at him, laying a hand on his
shoulder.</p>
<p id="id00025">"We'll manage not to talk about my speech, Mr. Everett," he said.
"This isn't the first time I've felt that my dignity ought not to
permit me to be a public speaker."</p>
<p id="id00026">He went on in a few cordial sentences to pay tribute to the orator
of the occasion. Everett listened thoughtfully and when the chief had
done, "Mr. President," he said simply, "I should be glad if I could
flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in
two hours as you did in two minutes."</p>
<p id="id00027">But Lincoln shook his head and laughed and turned to speak to a
newcomer with no change of opinion—he was apt to trust his own
judgments.</p>
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