graceful, sure of voice and of movement--took his seat, a tall, gaunt
figure detached itself from the group on the platform and slouched
slowly across the open space and stood facing the audience. A stir
and a whisper brushed over the field of humanity, as if a breeze
had rippled a monstrous bed of poppies. This was the President. A
quivering silence settled down and every eye was wide to watch this
strange, disappointing appearance, every ear alert to catch the first
sound of his voice. Suddenly the voice came, in a queer, squeaking
falsetto. The effect on the audience was irrepressible, ghastly.
After Everett's deep tones, after the strain of expectancy, this
extraordinary, gaunt apparition, this high, thin sound from the huge
body, were too much for the American crowd's sense of humor, always
stronger than its sense of reverence. A suppressed yet unmistakable
titter caught the throng, ran through it, and was gone. Yet no one
who knew the President's face could doubt that he had heard it and
had understood. Calmly enough, after a pause almost too slight to be
recognized, he went on, and in a dozen words his tones had gathered
volume, he had come to his power and dignity. There was no smile now
on any face of those who listened. People stopped breathing rather,
as if they feared to miss an inflection. A loose-hung figure, six
feet four inches high, he towered above them, conscious of and
quietly ignoring the bad first impression, unconscious of a charm of
personality which reversed that impression within a sentence. That
these were his people was his only thought. He had something to say to
them; what did it matter about him or his voice?

"Fourscore and seven years ago," spoke the President, "our fathers
brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we
are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any