He
is going to address a Chicago audience. It is not likely that they will
hoot him now. After some difficulty I find him. His face lights up with
a certain gladness as he sees me. But he is a dying eagle that ruffles
its feathers when food is offered it; then sinks back upon its broken
wing when it sees that it cannot eat. What is my friendship now to him?
What is any earthly thing to him? He bears the sorrows of earth without
the consolation that any Heaven can cure them. His voice is hoarse, his
face is worn and streaked with agony. His eyes look through me, over me,
beyond me. He sees me, but what am I? His hair is gray--much grayer than
mine. He is only 48 but he is an old man. He has no place in life now
but to save the Union. All his strength and activity have come to this
simple faith, as simple as the faith of a child. He reaches back into
the years when he was 21 and first came to Illinois, to that substance
of his being, always inherent and of his genius, which was and is now
compact of nationalism, progress, intelligence, the firm union of
sovereign states. This is all he has to sustain him now. He has laid up
this food for the last hours, for this crisis of his soul. All souls
must lay up something spiritual, even as they must lay up food for the
winter of life, for the bleak bright hours of the soul's sterile fight.
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