Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/77

 pocket of the long tails of his coat, and on one or two occasions had watched him gently pinch into a julep the tender sprigs of mint the spring had brought to Springfield, the appropriation for some reason was made. While he was there he said he wished to visit the tomb of Lincoln, and it was with pride that I got an open carriage and drove him, on an incomparable morning in June, out to Oak Ridge cemetery. He was in a solemn mood that morning; the visit had a meaning for him; he had fought on the other side in the great war, but he had a better conception of the character of the noble martyr than many a northerner, especially of the day when that tomb was built, certainly a nobler conception of that lofty character than is expressed in Mead's cruel war groups—as though Lincoln had been merely some shoulder-strapped murderer of his fellow men! The Colonel had never been there before, and it was an occasion for him, and for me, too, though every time I went there it was for me an occasion, as my sojourn in Springfield was an opportunity, to induce those who had known Lincoln to talk about him.

The tomb has a chamber in its base where there were stored a number of things; the place, indeed, was a sort of cheap museum, and you paid to enter there and listen to an aged custodian lecture on the "relics," and thrill the gaping onlooker with the details of the attempt to steal the body, and buy a book about it, if you were morbid and silly enough. The custodian began his lecture in that chamber, and then led you out into the sunlight again, and