They journeyed to that tomb.  Some on ’em had been used to stand by the tombs of their own great dead under the magestic aisles of Westminster Abbey, whose lofty glories dwarfs the human form almost to a pigmy.

Some had stood by the white marble poem of the Tag Megal in India, wherein a royal soul has carved his love for a woman.  If that race, to whom we send missionaries to civilize them, could raise such a tomb over its dead, and a woman too, who had done no great things, only loved the man who raised this incomparable monument over her—­what could they expect to find raised by this great and dominant race over the dead form of the man who had saved the hull country from ruin?

So with feelin’s of awe and wonder in their hearts, expectin’ to see they knew not what, the awestruck, admirin’ foreigner paused before the tomb of the Great Leader—­and he see nothin’.  Not even a respectable grave-stun, such as you see in any New England graveyard. (Or that has been the case till very lately.  But now things look a little brighter in the monument line.)

But it has been a shame, and a burnin’ one, so burnin’ that it has seemed to me that it would take all the cool blue waters that glide along below, a-complainin’ of the slight and insult to our Hero—­it would take more than all these waters to wash it out and make the country clean agin.

But she had one of her spells, and whether she wuz well or whether she wuz sick, New York lied jest like a dog about it.

Whether she wuz crazy or not, the fact remained that she had bragged, and then gin out; had promised, and not performed.

I believe she wuz out of her head.

Then there wuz the same kind of a performance she went through with the
Goddess of Liberty.

When France had gin that beautiful and most wondeful creeter to us as a present, it looked sort o’ shabby in New York to not provide a platform for that female to stand up on.

Now, didn’t it?  She a-offerin’ to light up the world if she only had a place to stand up on—­and the great continent of America not bein’ willin’ to gin it to her.

[Illustration:  She a-offerin’ to light up the world, if she only had a place to stand up on.]

New York talked—­oh, yes, it wuz a-goin’ to do great things!  Oh, what a big, noble door-step it wuz a-layin’ out to rize up for that goddess to stand on!

But there it wuz, New York had one of her spells agin, lost her faculties, forgot all about what she said she wuz a-goin’ to do—­and left that noble female, left that princely present to lay round in a heap, a perfect imposition to France and to human nater.

The idee of a goddess with no place to stand up on!  The Great Republic a-stretchin’ out on each side, and no place for her feet to rest on.

And no knowin’ but she would have been a-layin’ round to-day, all broke up and onjinted, if it hadn’t been for a public-sperited newspaper man, who took the matter up, and worked at it, and called public attention to it, till at last it got a place for the goddess to be histed up on her feet, and rest her legs a spell, all crumpled up under her.