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About three years after Mr. Lincoln had been buried at Springfield I went to that city to visit his resting place and to see my old college chum, William H. Herndon. I hoped we could go together to visit Lincoln’s grave. But I found that Mr. Herndon had moved seven miles into the country, and that he had recently had a long and serious illness, so that he would probably not be able to come to the city at that time. I then learned for the first time of my old friend’s dissipation, following Lincoln’s death. At last his friends had to send him into the country to get him away from the saloons and his boon companions. No doubt, in his dissipated and mentally-wrecked condition, he had written the false and absurd things of Lincoln that marred his history of that great man—a history that contains much valuable truth and information. But his intemperate habits and abnormal mental condition are doubtless to blame for the absurd and silly stories that mar the history and wrong the memory of the good Lincoln. It is strange that men of good sense will reproduce these outrageous falsehoods in their papers and magazines as history, when there is neither truth nor history in them.

When I found that my unfortunate old school mate could not go with me, I went alone to Lincoln’s grave. I was surprised to find that he was not buried in the old cemetery that I had often seen, but that his burial place was a long way north of town, and reached by street cars. When I got there I was again surprised to

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find his grave near the old stage road that ran in early times from Springfield to Peoria, and but a short distance from the old ferry where the road crossed the Sangamon river. All this ground was familiar to me. It brought to my mind many incidents of an historical nature. The ferry was of great importance in the olden

times. The high land on either side came to the river, and it could therefore be crossed in any stage of water; but below this ferry for forty miles the river was difficult to cross, because of the low bottom lands that would overflow. Mr. Lincoln informed me of this fact, which he had discovered while navigating the river with flatboats and his steamboat. So it was that while I was carrying the mail in times of high water, instead of going from Athens to Sangamontown, and thus crossing deep sloughs and creeks, I kept up the river and crossed this ferry, two miles from Springfield, and so traveled up this old and familiar road that ran by Lincoln’s grave.

Tradition tells us that it was at this ferry where Mr. Lincoln landed his canoe when he first came down the Sangamon river to make that locality his home, he then being a mere lad, and that he walked up the same old road to the hamlet of Springfield. It was at this ferry landing, also, that he landed and tied up for a week the steamboat Talisman, and stood upon her upper deck, and from day to day addressed the great crowds of people who flocked to the river to see the wonderful steamboat. These were the speeches in which he told the people of the wonderful possibilities of the great state, and of its opulent future, if these possibilities were improved. What a prophet he was! And yet he was in full view of the knoll on which was to stand his imperial monument of today, and never dreamed of the reverence and honor that would come to him. And I had often carried the mail over this ferry and highway close by this to be forever sacred spot, little thinking of the wonderful things to come in the following thirty-three years.

Mr. Lincoln’s remains were then enclosed in a brick vault, the walls two feet thick and twelve feet high. Since then the great monument has been erected above his ashes.

I sat down by my old friend's grave while the old memories crowded thick and fast about me. I recalled my first acquaintance with him in 1832; the many times I sat at the same table with him at the Rutledge tavern in New Salem; of the many times we had joined in changing the

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mail; I remember the last time I traveled the road, carrying the pouch of letters his hands touched; of the time he took the long walk in the hot sun to get Judge Thomas to fix the title papers to my land, refusing to accept a fee, because he said, I had done favors for him. All of these incidents and numberless acts of kindness on his part crowded my memory. And then came before me his splendid future life with its mighty honors and mightier burdens; his election to the presidency; the long and terrible war in which he was the great commander of army and navy; that noble victory that under heaven he achieved, and his cruel death amidst the shouts for the union restored and peace assured forever. And sitting by his grave I paid the homage of tears to my boyhood friend, the best, and truest, and sweetest man I ever knew.

I believe that Lincoln might have said, the day before his assassination, as truly as did the Apostle Paul before his martyrdom:

"I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the Righteous Judge, shall give me at that day."

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