“Mr. Lincoln sometimes walked our streets cheerily, good-humoredly, perhaps joyously--and then it was, on meeting a friend, he cried, ‘How d’ye?’ clasping one of his friend’s hands in both of his, giving a good, hearty soul-welcome. Of a winter’s morning he might be seen stalking and stilting it toward the market-house, basket on arm, his old gray shawl wrapped around his neck, his little Willie or Tad running along at his heels, asking a thousand little quick questions, which his father heard not, not even then knowing that little Willie or Tad was there, so abstracted was he. When he thus met a friend, he said that something put him in mind of a story which he heard in Indiana or elsewhere, and tell it he would, and there was no alternative but to listen. “Thus, I say, stood and walked and looked this singular man. He was odd, but when that gray eye and face, and every feature were lit up by the inward soul in fires of emotion, _then_ it was that all those apparently ugly features sprang into organs of beauty, or sunk themselves into a sea of inspiration that sometimes flooded his face. Sometimes it appeared to me that Lincoln’s soul was just fresh from the presence of its Creator.” “This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad man, floated into our county in 1831, in a frail canoe, down the north fork of the Sangamon River, friendless, penniless, powerless, and alone--begging for work in this city,--ragged, struggling for the common necessaries of life. This man, this peculiar man, left us, in 1861, the President of the United States, backed by friends and power, by fame and all human force; and it is well to inquire _how?_ “To sum up, let us say, here is a sensitive, diffident, unobtrusive, natural-made gentleman. His mind was strong and deep, sincere and honest, patient and enduring; having no vices and having only negative defects, with many positive virtues. His is a strong, honest, sagacious, manly, noble life. He stands in the foremost rank of men in all ages,--their equal,--one of the best types of this Christian civilization.” CHAPTER XXXIV. MR. LINCOLN’S FAVORITE POEM. One evening when Mr. Carpenter, the artist, was alone with Mr. Lincoln in his study, the President said: “There is a poem that has been a great favorite with me for years, to which my attention was first called when a young man, by a friend, and which I afterward saw and cut from a newspaper and carried in my pocket till, by frequent reading, I had it by heart. I would give a great deal to know who wrote it, but I could never ascertain.” He then repeated the poem, now familiar to the public, commencing, “Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”