“Of course he seemed pretty cheerful always. He wan’t no man to show out all he felt. Lots of them little stuck-up chaps that came out here to talk to him said, solemn as owls, ‘He don’t realize the gravity of the situation.’ Them’s their words, ‘gravity of the situation.’ Think of that, Mr. Lincoln not realizing. They ought to heard him talk to us the night he went away. I’ll never forgit that speech—nor any man who heard it. I can see him now just how he looked, standin’ there on the end of his car. He’d been shakin’ hands with the crowd in the depot, laughing and talking, just like himself, but when he got onto that car he seemed suddint to be all changed. You never seen a face so sad in all the world. I tell you he had woe in his heart that minute, woe. He knew he was leavin’ us for good, nuthin’ else could explain the way he looked and what he said. He knew he never was comin’ back alive. It was rainin’ hard, but when we saw him standin’ there in bare head, his great big eyes lookin’ at us so lovin’ and mournful, every man of us took off his hat, just as if he’d been in church. You never heard him make a speech, of course? You missed a lot. Curious voice. You could hear it away off—kind of shrill, but went right to your heart—and that night it sounded sadder than anything I ever heard. You know I always hear it to this day, nights when the wind howls around the house. Ma says it makes her nervous to hear me talk about him such nights, but I can’t help it; just have to let out. “He stood a minute lookin’ at us, and then he began to talk. There ain’t a man in this town that heard him that ever forgot what he said, but I don’t believe there’s a man that ever said it over out loud—he couldn’t, without cryin’. He just talked to us that time out of his heart. Somehow we felt all of a suddint how we loved him and how he loved us. We hadn’t taken any stock in all that talk about his bein’ killed, but when he said he was goin’ away not knowin’ where or whether ever he would return I just got cold all over. I begun to _see_ that minute and everybody did. The women all fell to sobbin’ and a kind of groan went up, and when he asked us to pray for him I don’t believe that there was a man in that crowd, whether he ever went to church in his life, that didn’t want to drop right down on his marrow bones and ask the Lord to take care of Abraham Lincoln and bring him back to us, where he belonged. [Illustration: “_He just talked to us that time out of his heart_”]