"Sit down," Blair commanded. "Don't grudge a few minutes to a man in
hard luck. I want to tell you about that speech. You're not so busy
but that you ought to know."

"Well, yes," said Lincoln, "perhaps I ought." He took out his watch
and made a quick mental calculation. "It's only a question of going
without my dinner, and the boy is dying," he thought. "If I can give
him a little pleasure the dinner is a small matter." He spoke again.
"It's the soldiers who are the busy men, not the lawyers, nowadays,"
he said. "I'll be delighted to spend a half hour with you, Captain
Blair, if I won't tire you."

"That's good of you," the young officer said, and a king on his throne
could not have been gracious in a more lordly yet unconscious way.
"By the way, this great man isn't any relation of yours, is he, Mr.
Lincoln?"

"He's a kind of connection--through my grandfather," Lincoln
acknowledged. "But I know just the sort of fellow he is--you can say
what you want."

"What I want to say first is this: that he yesterday made one of the
great speeches of history."

"What?" demanded Lincoln, staring.

"I know what I'm talking about." The young fellow brought his thin
fist down on the bedclothes. "My father was a speaker--all my uncles
and my grandfather were speakers. I've been brought up on oratory.
I've studied and read the best models since I was a lad in