1868—DECORATION DAY—1906.

Among the holidays which are generally observed in the United States, none excites more reverence in the breast of an American, or more respect in the mind of a foreigner, than Decoration (or Memorial) Day.

Decoration Day was first celebrated in 1866, by Union soldiers and sailors in Washington. In the spring of 1868 General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued an order in which he named May 30 as a day on which all members of the G.A.R. should repair to the cemeteries in the towns in which they lived and there spread flowers on the graves of their dead comrades.

Among the many tributes paid to our dead soldiers none has made a more profound impression on two generations of American people than the speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, on November 19, 1863, on the occasion of the dedication of a part of the famous battle-field as a soldiers' cemetery. It is here given in full, from a manuscript in Lincoln's own handwriting.

LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG.

Fourscore and seven years ago 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 nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.