CHAPTER XXXV

THE POEM

The Clary Grove gang were going to have an important meeting. It had been rumored that Windy Batts, who went as a missionary to the Indians, had lost his head. The general satisfaction with which this news had been received by the Clary Grove gang, singly, indicated that it would prove a pleasant topic for discussion, and nobody was likely to disagree with Ole Bar when he said: "Them pizen shooting injuns has riz to a tall and mighty pre-eminence in my mind if they cut off that fire and brimstone croaker's rattle box."

Kit Parsons was expected to divulge a plan for giving the angels another job. He had been desperately sick during the summer, and while lying at death's door a local religious enemy had said the gates of hell would soon shut Kit in where he had ought to have been before he was born. Kit said he had pulled through to fan the face off of this profane wretch with brick-bats. The details of the plans expected to prove interesting.

A great horse-swapping horse-story was also expected, provided Buck Thompson reached New Salem that night. He had been up the Ohio River and it was told by a man that passed through Sangamon County that Buck had traded a Yankee out of a horse and got fairly good boot; that he took the horse, fed it some filler, painted its ears, trimmed its tail and dyed it, put a few dapples on its hide and traded it back to the same Yankee for yet more boot.

The group was about the fire when Buck came. He had been away some weeks, and before the story-telling started he wanted to hear something of town affairs.

"Lots of sickness," Kit Parsons said.

"Yeh?" Buck questioned.

"Yes--Grandpa Johnson's dead and Clem Herndon's boy and Ann Rutledge."

Buck was interested now.

"Ann Rutledge dead? No!"

"Yeh--she's dead."

"Abe's gal."

"Dead and buried out near Concord."

"Poor old Abe. Take it hard, did he?"

"Nobody knows. He ain't saying nothin'."

"They say he went crazy for a time," Kit Parsons remarked.

"They lie," said Ole Bar. "Abry Linkhorn hain't never gone nowhere near crazy at no time."

"Maybe he didn't go clear crazy, but Doc Allen said he was hit hard and wasn't likely to git over it no time soon."

"I bet a bottle against a bottle he's over it now," said Buck Thompson. "Who'll take it up? Will you, Jack Armstrong?"

"If it was somebody like you are I would. You get petticoat-fever every change of the moon, take it like spring pimples that's always goin' and comin'. But some take it like the smallpox and don't never get over the scars. Abe Lincoln's the kind that will wear the scars."

"Bars is the same," Ole Bar ventured. "Most bars is done with their women folks after matin' season. Once in a lifetime you find a pair of bars stickin' together. Nobody but their maker knows what they do it fur. It's the same with men, and Abry Linkhorn, he picked him out one worth stickin' to.

"Yeh--nobody blames him for gettin' sweet on Ann Rutledge. But poke up the fire and let's get jolly or this dead talk will stir up the spooks."

While they were piling up the fire and stacking up the bottles, someone looked down the road and saw a tall, slightly bent figure approaching in the darkness.

"Boys, he's comin'," Kit Parsons announced.

"Who--who's coming?"

"Abe Lincoln--or his ghost."

"Thunder--I hope he's not crazy. I kin manage Yankees and niggers--but crazy ones--ugh!" and Thompson shrugged his shoulders.

"Pull in your sorgum-sucker," Ole Bar said shortly, "and don't none of you get nothin' started about his gal."

"That's it," said Jack Armstrong. "If he hain't forgot about her let's help him do it. Let's give him a howlin' good time."

Then they grew silent, for he was approaching and they wondered. They had not seen him since Ann's death.

The fresh flames were throwing fitful lights up into the overhanging brown branches and over the faces of the group, when Lincoln came into the circle of light and, extending his hand here and there, said: "Howdy, boys, howdy."

Something like a sigh of relief passed around the group. He didn't seem crazy.

He dropped himself in the circle of light. Then for the time they saw his face the effect of which was to bring a respectful silence over the noisy group.

The wind rustled slightly and a couple of brown leaves floated down to the fireside. The gray face looked up a moment. Another leaf was falling. They all watched it.

"Boys," said Lincoln in a voice they did not know, "the leaves are fallin' early."

"Yeh--droppin' early this year."

Again there was a pause. Then he said, "I haven't been with you in a long time."

"Not in a coon's age--and we're glad to have you, Abe."

"I'm glad to be here. I felt as if it would do me good to see you all. And I've brought a poem I want to read if you don't care."

"Is it jolly?"

"Yeh--something damn jolly is what we want."

"No," said Lincoln slowly, "it is not jolly. It's the other kind. But this is my favorite of all poems. May I read it to you?"

"Go to it, Abry Linkhorn," Ole Bar said.

Abe Lincoln took a book from his pocket, opened it and laid it on his knee.

He read as if asking them the question:

O why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift, fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud; A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.

There was a slight pause. Every man's eye was on the gray face bending over the book in the flickering light.

When he began reading the next verse he lifted his eyes from the pages and looked away, farther away than the circle of brown-branched trees. There was, to the men, a suggestion in his tone of an approach to something strange, perhaps forbidding.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered abroad and together be laid.

He paused a moment. Involuntarily several glances were cast toward the leaves lying by the legs at their feet.

He went on:

And the young and the old, the low and the high, Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.

It was very quiet.

The peasant whose lot is to sow and to reap, The herdsman who climbs with his goats up the steep, The beggar who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

There was much more than the words in the reading.

The group about the fire saw the peasant, saw the herdsman. They saw the saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven and the sinner who dared to remain unforgiven. There in the quiet of the night beside the ashes and the flames, he was making all these live--and go their short way.

So the multitude goes--like the flowers or the weeds

* * * * *

So the multitude comes, even these we behold, To repeat every tale that has ever been told

Kit Parsons punched the fire. Buck Thompson reached for a bottle and drew his hand back empty.

We are the same that our fathers have been,

* * * * *

We drink the same stream and view the same sun And run the same course that our fathers have run.

Pausing again, as if a line of thought ran in between the verses, he looked away from the book. The next verse was about the mother and child--each, all are away to their dwelling of rest.

He seemed now hesitating whether or not to proceed. The men watched him without comment. His gray face was marked with a fresh baptism of pain which he seemed to be struggling to put away.

With unsteady voice he read.

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, Show beauty and pleasure--

Here there was a long pause. Ole Bar got up and went out. Kit Parsons poked the fire. Buck Thompson took to spitting. But no man spoke as the voice by the fire pronounced the words "her triumphs--are by," and even the fire seemed to burn softly.

For a moment he glanced about the group--a helpless glance of appeal to those strong men. Buck Thompson was drawing his sleeves across his eye, evidently to remove some foreign matter. Jack Armstrong was pinching his red bandanna down under his leg. Another chunk was pitched into the fire.

It was a relief when he went on again to the "Hand of the king that the scepter hath borne," and the "brow of the priest that the miter hath worn." They seemed to see the king and the priest and they felt the force of the words as he read:

From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink. To the lives we are clinging our fathers would cling. But it speeds from us all--like--a--bird--on--the--wing.

He measured the words off slowly. He was not looking at the book. Perhaps he saw fleet birds winging their way beyond his vision. His listeners divined something of the kind.

He had reached another hard place. He picked up the book and looked at it and replaced it on his knee. Again he was speaking nearer or farther than those just about him.

They loved--but the story we cannot unfold.... They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

"Jo," he said, handing the book to Kelsy, "you know the poem. Finish it for the boys."

Kelsy finished it. But they did not hear him. The poem to them mattered little. The man who had read it meant much.

"What's the name of that there poem?" Buck Thompson asked.

"_Immortality._"

"Immortality--that means that this here vale of tears is not all that's comin' to us?"

"That's it. We are only here a little while at best. Any good thing therefore that we can do, let's do it. We won't come back this way, you know."

Here Ole Bar returned. They all looked at him inquiringly.

"What you lookin' at?" he growled. "Nothin' the matter with that poem. But my fool nose she runs like the devil at first frost fall and leaves ain't much good fur shuttin' her off when'a poem's goin' on."

His explanation was accepted.

Lincoln was speaking again. "You've been good friends to have, and I want to say, because I won't always be about these parts, that if any of you ever get in need of a friend and Abe Lincoln can help him out, call on him. And I want to say to you that I've lived the best time of my life right here in New Salem--the happiest--and--well, I'll see you again--good-bye, boys." And the tall man slightly bent, and moving as if aged, left the group around the fire.

There was silence about the fire for a full minute.

"Poor Old Abe," said Buck.

"I'd a give my right arm to have kept this here thing from happenin'," said Armstrong.

"Do you fellows recollect," Kit Parsons said, "the man that was through here preaching two years ago--the feller that preached one night about the 'Man of Sorrows?' Recollect how the women bawled? Looked like they couldn't suppress themselves nor get hold of enough dry-goods to sop up their flowin' tears. It's just now soakin' into my head the reason of it all."

"Well, what was it?"

"That feller made 'em _see_ the man."

Here was thought for reflection.

A moment later Buck Thompson took up a bottle, threw back his head and raised it to his lips, saying as he did so, "I'm glad he didn't say nothin' about Ann Rutledge."

"Ann Rutledge!" exclaimed Ole Bar. "Idiot! Fool! He didn't mention _nothin' else_."