Abraham Lincoln was both Saviour and Father; for he preserved whatever was most valuable in the old and created a new order of things possessing an inherent dignity and importance which the old never had. And such titles the people bestow upon him through love. The characteristics of the man stood prominently out in the statesman. He had not one garb as an official and another as a citizen. No change marked his transit from the chat of the drawing-room to the consultation of cabinet. What he was in the one situation he was in the other. His peculiar humor was not, as those who least knew him judged, his habitual disposition. More of melancholy and sadness centred in him than most were aware. His favorite poem--given below for the sufficient reason that it was his favorite--attests the vein of pensiveness which was in him. “There is one poem,” he remarked in conversation, “that is almost continually present with me: it comes in my mind whenever I have relief from thought and care.” Oh, 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 passeth from life to his rest in the grave. The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered around and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high, Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. The infant a mother attended and loved; The mother that infant’s affection who proved; The husband that mother and infant who blessed, Each, all, are away to their dwellings of Rest. The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye Shone beauty and pleasure--her triumphs are by; And the memory of those who loved her and praised, Are alike from the minds of the living erased. The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne; The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn; The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave, Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave. The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap; The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep; The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the grass that we tread. The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven, The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven, The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed That withers away to let others succeed; So the multitude comes, even those we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told. For we are the same our fathers have been; We see the same sights our fathers have seen-- We drink the same stream and view the same sun-- And run the same course our fathers have run.