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cent joke, perfectly proper on such an occasion. On the following day, he saluted his astounded colleague as Abraham Lincoln, the Nestor of the Illinois Bar. Fifteen

years later, on delivering to the aforesaid young lawyer his credentials as Minister to one of the American Republics, he recalled to his memory the story of the comet with that ingenuous mirth which is the frankincense of all good souls.

It is also told of him, that when our Envoy, Rear-Admiral Simpson, was presented to him, for the purpose of obtaining the permission of his Government to build ships of war for Chile in the ship yard of the United States, he gave the refusal in a peculiar characteristic manner. "We will receive you," said he, "as Envoy of a nation which we highly esteem, as a librarian receives all who visit his rooms. You shall have all at your disposal, look at everything, examine everything; but then you cannot have a single thing; you may not carry away the book lent to you, for it is my duty to return it safely to its place."

XXII.

Abraham Lincoln joined, to a sound, practical judgment, common to men of his race, the most exquisite simplicity of language. It was said of him that no man in the United States could say more in fewer words, nor greater things in more humble language. The frugality of his habits could be compared only with the modesty of his character. Never did he drink any kind of liquor during his long and austere life, nor did he even allow himself the innocent use of tobacco. His dress was as unpretending as that of the old Puritans. In Washington, as at Springfield, he used to buy the first suit he saw in a tailor's show-window; and had his wardrobe been appraised at the time of his death, it would not have been valued at more than that of his predecessor and friend, General Taylor, who, while President of the United States, was wont to appear in the streets of Washington in a common suit, the total value of which was estimated by passers-by at "nine dollars."

XXIII.

His personal looks did not fail to harmonize with his

disregard for appearances. That man, gifted as he was, with such rich qualities of soul and mind, had, like the opaque vase of Scripture, a common, almost vulgar, look. He was very tall, bony, thin and gaunt, and his coarse features gave no signs of the gentleness of his soul, save in that ever present smile which death itself found playing round his lips. He was the backwoodsman of the West, removed to the Capitol at Washington, in all his original rusticity, which seemed to lend increased strength to his innate power. He was the same wood-cutter of the Ohio, seated on the throne of human democracy, save that the destinies of the world now depended upon his

axe!

XXIV.

Such was Abraham Lincoln, the liberator of the slaves -the new Moses who dictated to the disinherited race of Ham the tables of the covenant like unto those received on Sinai by the Hebrew people—the people of the Saviour of mankind-Jesus Christ.

He lived an honest man, and died, like the saints of the Christian calendar, anointed with blood and the glory of martyrdom. His grand mission of humanity, of duty, and responsibility, being ended, he had not, like Washington at Mount Vernon, or Jackson at the Hermitage, that last happiness of great and toil-worn men, a peaceful death at the close of the long and arduous work to which they were called on earth by the Supreme Distributor of callings.

Neither did he close his eyes in death, as did his predecessors, Adams, Jefferson, and Monroe, on the great day of their country, as though that country wished to display its brightest gems as she gathered them for ever into her bosom. *Abraham Lincoln ceased to exist on a still more solemn day. The redeemer of the slaves died on the day on which the Redeemer of all mankind was crucified on Calvary!

*

Let his memory be blessed throughout all ages to come!

XXV.

And until those ages shall arrive, with their royal offerings of reward and justice, let thy name, oh! Abraham Lincoln be known and proclaimed as Benefactor by ail

the oppressed of the earth; let thy memory be glorified with hymns of gratitude and praise by all free men who know thy origin, wood-cutter of the forest, and have heard of thy end, oh! martyr of liberty! Let thy new redeeming doctrine of government, clothed in the white robe of that grand truth, unspotted as it came from thee, be inscribed in the book of the destinies of the New World, by the side of Washington's Farewell and Monroe's Doctrine-those two covenants of that American democracy of the propagation of which they were the first apostles, as thou hast just been made the martyr. Let thy simple homestead at Springfield be consecrated by the ovations of the world as the humble temple of thy humble virtues; let thy love for all that was good, and for thy fellow-men, let thy veneration for home and family, let thy constant fear of the All-Powerful and of thy country's verdict, sole guide of thy guiltless conscience-let thy charity for all who, hungry in body or soul, thou feddest with thy bread or didst relieve with thy wisdom-let all these, like a choir of angels, be grouped around thy tomb, with all the other emblems of those sublime gifts which have made thy name couspicuous amongst those of thy fellow-beings— thy Probity and thy Poverty !

Yes! oh, Abraham Lincoln ! blessed be thy poverty, at which the proud and haughty ones did scoff, whom thou didst afterwards humble and subdue but to pardon; and which covers with shame and confusion all those who, born like thyself, did not know how to remain poor when powerful as thou wast, humble dictator of a world of opulency!

Yes I oh, Abraham Lincoln ! let thy grave, opened by the tears of thy fellow-countrymen, in the very centre of thy glorious Union, serve henceforth, as Washington's at Mount Vernon, for an altar of consolation and oblations to the pilgrim who searches throughout the universe for the worship of his persecuted creed; to the exile who bears on his forehead the impress of cruel tyranny; to the emigrant who comes to thy soil in search of bread for his loved ones; to the negro-slave who shall journey from all lands and from all islands wherever thy voice may have broken his fetters, to ask for his tutelary genius and to bless him; to the human race, in fine, who acknowledges thee as an apostle of truth, as a creator of a new era in

the reign of ideas, as the greatest reformer of the political principles which have ruled or misguided peoples and governments, and as the purest and most innocent martyr, the one most capable of every heroism and every virtue who ever fell beneath the hand of a parricide !

And for all this, oh, Abraham Lincoln on this soil of distant Chili, on which are raised monuments to the martyrs of ideas and victims of the fanatical, let there bone. offering worthy of thy glorification after thy martyrdom; for thou too didst love our land and serve it; for with the breath of thy spotless integrity thou didst efface for ever from the altar of our alliance that reproach of idolatry of money which the greediness of covetous traders had ever shown for its never filled coffer; because thou didst repay the joy with which we heard of thy victories with the ingenuous thanks so often expressed in thy despatches, ever brilliant with the sincerity of thy language; because thou alone, of all the powerful, didst remember that on certain grand but ignored days, there was, on the soil of thy country. a tri-colored flag, the banner of our narion, and didst order honors to be paid to it not rendered to the standards of the powerful; and because, noble and good friend of Chile, as thou didst look around over the diaphanic firmament of nature, thou didst more than once contemplate, with loving look, that lone star, the symbol of our destiny, twin-sister of those on thy once again intact banner, and which, like them, shall shine until time shall be no more, with the resplendent brilliancy of fixed stars, never with the borrowed light of satellites.

And for all this also, oh, Abraham Lincoln ! whilst Europe exhumes from the dust of ages the figures which embody its perverse idolatry of usurpers and tyrants, America, ever independent, ever free, ever democratic, will return the challenge of monarchies, by presenting to the eyes of the world thine immortal image and by venerating thy name, a thousand-fold greater than all the ancient Cæsars, again restored to life, as that of a common father who from high heaven unites, with loving hands, into one single family, at once respected and powerful, those two grand divisions of the earth and of the human race, known as the World of Columbus.

B. VICUÑA MACKENNA.

SANTIAGO, June 1st, 1865.

MOTION

Offered in the House of Deputies of Chile, at their Meeting of 3d June, 1865.

The name of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, sixteenth President of the United States of North America, has been, for the past four years, to all the nations of South America, and especially to Chile, the most conspicuous and characteristic emblem of the Democratic institutions which prevail in the greater part of the countries of the New World.

By his most noble fulfilment of his difficult and great mission, no less than by the exalted qualities of his character, had that eminent citizen attained, in the opinion of the Chilian people, to the same height at which our seniors, half a century since, contemplated the figure of George Washington first President of the Union, and beyond doubt the true initiator of the independence of both continents of America.

But to the bright gems of his high personal merits and of his honest, just and freedom-giving policy, the tragic and sudden death of President Lincoln, at the very moment in which he was about closing the great work of social reconstruction which he had undertaken, giving life and civil liberty to four millions of human beings, has added to his renown the glory of a noble martyrdom, at the sight of which the heart of all true Americans has been shrouded in mourning.

And of all the nations of our Continent and people of our race, Chilians have especial reasons to offer their sympathy and sorrow to the people and Government of the United States, for the irreparable loss of that man who from all points of view was great.

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