On that dreamy, hazy nineteenth of April--suggesting, were it not for the early green leaves, the fresh springing grass, the glad spring caroling of birds, “that sweet autumnal summer which the Indian loved so well”--on that day when sleep wooed one even in the early morn, his obsequies were celebrated in the country’s metropolis. And throughout the land, minute guns were fired, bells tolled, business suspended, and the thoughtful betook themselves to prayer, if so be that what verily seemed a curse might pass from us. Thence the funeral _cortege_ moved to the final resting-place--the remains of a darling son, earlier called, accompanying those of the father--by the route the President had taken when first he had been summoned to the chair of State. Before half of the mournful task was done, came tidings that the assassin had been sent to his final account by the avenger’s hand, gurgling out, as his worthless life ebbed away, “useless! useless!” As the sad procession wended its way, where hundreds had gathered in ’61, impelled by mere curiosity or by partisan sympathy, thousands gathered, four years later, through affection, through reverence, through deep, abiding sorrow. Flowers beautified the lifeless remains--dirges were sung--the people’s great heart broke out into sobs and sighing. And so, home to the prairie they bore him whom, when first he was called, the Nation knew not--whom, mid the storms and ragings of those years of civil war, they had learned, had loved, to call father and friend. In the Oak Ridge Cemetery, in his own Springfield, on the fourth of May, 1865, they laid him to rest, at the foot of a knoll, in the most beautiful part of the ground, over which forest trees--rare denizens of the prairie--look lovingly. There all that is mortal of ABRAHAM LINCOLN reposes. “The immortal?” Hail, and farewell! CHAPTER XXVI. THE MAN. Reasons for His Re-election--What was Accomplished--Leaning on the People--State Papers--His Tenacity of Purpose--Washington and Lincoln--As a Man--Favorite Poem--Autobiography--His Modesty--A Christian--Conclusion. What shall be said, in summing up, of Abraham Lincoln as a statesman and a man? That from such humble beginnings, in circumstances so adverse, he rose to be the Chief Magistrate of one of the leading countries of the world, would were it in any other country, be evidence of ability of the very highest order.