Evening star., 1928-05-27
LUCRETIA E. HEMINGToN.

~ NCE again from the softly roll
ing hills of Gettysburg there
will sound memorial address
~ in commemoration of the sac
rif1ces made to preserve the
Union, for on May 80 President Coolidge
viii stand where Lincoln stood to speak
in reverent eulogy of those who gave
the last full measure of devotion.
AS the assembled throng listens to
him on this perhaps most sacred day
in the history of the United States,
Lincoln will once again be the lord of
his event. For three days, back there
in 1863, the tremendous conflict of that
decisive battle had surged back and
forth among those hills and valleys,
taking its toll of men, men who wore
the blue and men who wore the gray.
Like windrows of cut grain they lay
upon those fields and found burial
within that blood-baptized earth. In
November of that same year, Lincoln,
grave and awed at the awful cost OF
war whose end was not yet in sight,
voiced dedicatory hymn to the Nation
whose Union was to be preserved at so
vast loss.
In long oratorical periods, Everett's
silvery tones had caught and held the
imagination of the throng that had
gathered to hear him. Deep and sim
cere applause greeted his finished part
in the days program. Graceful, sure
of himself and his message, the orator
of the day sat down, and Lincoln slowly
moved to the speakers place on the
platform the consciousness of
his less pleasing appearance swallowed
up in the well-nigh overwhelming
sense of the pain and the anguish that,
under scorching suns and torrential
rains, had, but little three months
4r11n fod CprVnd
under the flag that his hand still kept
flying at the masthead Of the ship OF
state. Many of those men lay now In
their last, long sleep beneath the SOUND
of his voice, They had heard his COM
rnand, they had obeyed, and the mute
evidence of their loyalty tore at MS
heart even AS it had ever since the first
call to arms.
In his study. he had searched the
springs of his spirit for some adequate
phrasing of the value of their high
endeavor, and he felt that there was
little, indeed. to say, their supreme
sacrifice calling for the only perfect
tribute known to man, the tribute OF
reverent silence. So brief his lines, SO
meager, so they seemed, though he had
tried on the train to add to, to modl1y'
what was written in his study.
So sensitive was he that he must
have spoken straight to the young
hearts lying beneath the sod in that
space that he was helping to dedicate.
His high. thin voice, after the first few
words. took on warmth and color ana
depth. AS he finished, an all-encom-
passing silence held, by that mystic
power, that throng from all demonstra-
ton, and Lincoln, the incomparapie,
sat down. burdened once more with
that sense of failure that dogged his
spirit like a dark shadow. He had
meant to do well by them, those brave
bows in blue, and he had failed them.
He did not know, could never know, |
90 brief the yet remaining span OF MS
allotted years, that that brief, SonorouS
hynn to his country would go singing |
down the halls of time. its cadences !
echoiug and re-echoing from one land /
to another, until, throughout the world; |
his Hawless tribute would be read and
wondered at, loved and reverenced.
finding even in England, that colner OF !
perfected word-grouping, an abiding
place because of the comelineSS OF its
phrases.
AS he slumped down in his chair ne
Gould not know that his grateful coun-
trvrnen would erect for him, on the |
banks of the Potomac, a white temple |
to house his shining spirit; would en-
body him there in white marble, ana |
surround him with the carven beauty |
of the very lines he had just sent out |
like caresses to the slain youth on those
then peaceful hills,
49, X
nEEP in the marble of the SOUTH
II ern wall of Lincoln's temple run |
the lines whose measured syllables Gre
ate their own harmony and whose clos
ing paragraph is like prayer:
'sIt is for us the living, rather, to be |
dedicated here to the unfinished work |
they have thus far so nobly carried on. |
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 the Nation |
shall, under God, have a new birth of |
freedom, and that government of the |
people, by the people, and for the peo-
pie, shall not perish from the earth"
The majesty of his temple, the lofty |
truths of the carved panels within it, |
tie serene and lonely figure of the |