OCR Text |
Show A TRIBUTEOF LOVE Pathos in Aged Negro's Offering in Lincoln's Honor. Humble Flowers Had a Deeper Significance Sig-nificance Than the Costly Products Prod-ucts of the Florist's Art. "The most touching tribute ever paid to Lincoln," Is the way a newspaper man described an Incident which he witnessed a few years ago In Washington. Wash-ington. The statues of famous Americans Amer-icans sland In the natioual capttol. and It Is the practice of various patriotic pa-triotic societies to decorate these statues stat-ues with flowers each Decoration day. Among .these marble effigies of the dead Is the splendid Gutzou Borglum bust of the martyred President The pathos of a great heart, breaking under un-der the woes of a nation divided against Itself, has been chiseled Into the stone by the Inspired sculptor. On this particular Decoration day the choicest products of the hothouse and the garden had been placed lovingly lov-ingly on the brows of Washington, of Lee, of Grant aud many others. A wreath of the richest roses the art of the tlorist could produce lay upon the brows of the Lincoln bust. The women whose reverent hands had put these tributes In place had gone, when Into the great rotunda of the capltol, almost deserted as always It Is on a holiday, hobbled an old negro, ne-gro, holding by one hand a little boy, a grandchild, perhaps. In his arms the old negro carried a great mass of the golden-centered daisies which grow In luxuriant profusion In every field around Washington. To keep the flowers flow-ers fresh a dampened cloth was bound about their stems. Across the marble floor shuffled the aged negro and his little charge. With a directness that showed he had made the sacred pilgrimage oftentimes before, be-fore, the one-time slave led the way to where the Lincoln bust rested upon its pedestal. The "negro, with eyes dimmed with age and tears, gazed for a few minutes upon the face of the martyred President, his lips moving as If in silent prayer. , Vhen his tribute, the tribute of a race set free, he laid, not on the pedestal with the costly trophies of the hothouse, but humbly in the dust at the pedestal's foot. |