He was elected in that last campaign for the fourth time, but he did not live very long. He had never, it seemed to me, been quite the same after the day when he had that experience of insult which he did not resent. "Draw the sting," he used to counsel us when, in our campaign harangues, we became bitter, or sarcastic, or merely smart. He had supreme reliance on the simple truth, on the power of reasonableness. He never reviled again; he never sought to even scores. When he died the only wounds he left in human hearts were because he was no more. They understood him at last, those who had scoffed and sneered and abused and vilified, and I, who had had the immense privilege of his friendship, and thought I knew him,—when I stood that July afternoon, on the veranda of his home, beside his bier to speak at his funeral, and looked out over the thousands who were gathered on the wide lawn before his home,—I realized that I, too, had not wholly understood him.
I know not how many thousands were there; they were standing on the lawns in a mass that extended across the street and into the yards on the farther side. Down to the corner, and into the side streets, they were packed, and they stood in long lines all the way out to the cemetery. In that crowd there were all sorts of that one sort he knew as humanity without distinction,—judges, and women of prominence and women whom he alone would have included in humanity, there were thieves, and prize-fighters,—and they all stood there with the tears streaming down their faces.
