CHAPTER XXXVI

JERUSALEM

As the war dragged to its end, Lincoln grew unutterably weary both in soul and body. "I think I shall never be glad again," he confided to a friend. Out of sunken eyes-so pitiful as one perceives who studies the life mask Clark Mills made a while before he died-there looked not merely brooding sadness, but something like unspeakable despair.

The morning of April 14th dawned soft and sunny on the Nation's Capitol. The lilacs were in eager bloom. The willows clothed their graceful boughs with a new green. Spring had come. For ten days news of victory after victory had been flashing over every wire, and even nature seemed determined men should know the winter's discontent was blossoming into a glorious summer of reunion and of reconciliation. The war was over.

There was no longer any doubt of that.

Early in the morning came the final word. Every

one rejoiced.

Even the countless many who were

mourning their dear dead felt the common thrill of a new joyousness. James Russell Lowell wrote his good friend Norton: "The news, my dear Charles, is from Heaven."

Lincoln was happiest of all. There was a new spring in his step. The bowed shoulders were uplifted. His tired face was all agleam with serene cheeriness. At the Cabinet meeting held soon after breakfast someone showed concern because no word had been received from Sherman. It was Lincoln who bade them be of good courage. They would soon have news from Sherman-news that all was well. He had dreamed the night beforeas often during those four years when something gratifying was about to happen-that he saw a vessel "moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore." He had learned to trust that dream. It never failed him..

In the afternoon he took Mrs. Lincoln out into the country for a drive and talk that only wife and husband know the meaning of at such a time. They planned far into the future. "Mary," he said, “we have had a hard time in Washington; but the war is over and with God's blessing we may hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to Illinois."

'Arnold's Life of Lincoln, p. 429.

They were going home.

To go home is the best thing any one can do. The call home is the one urge to which all normal men respond who have been beaten by the storms of life till the power to go on seems almost broken. The home-going instinct is world-wide.

That evening the President's box at Ford's Theatre was to be occupied. The party came in late. The play was well worth seeing. Laura Keene was at her best. The attention of the crowded house was divided between the play and the President. All were glad with him and glad for him.

For him at such a time the theatre had no glamour, the play no allurement. He was thinking of the better days to come, of going home, of God and His unfailing mercy, of Jesus Christ and His redeeming grace. Among the plans flitting through his mind was one to go as soon as circumstances would permit to Palestine. A yearning had come over him to tread "those holy fields over whose acres walked those blessed feet nail'd for our advantage on the bitter cross."

He said to Mrs. Lincoln there was no place he wished so much to see as Jerusalem. The word was but half finished on his lips. Mary heard him whisper, "Jeru-!" Then the most cruel and

most senseless bullet ever fired in history sped too surely to its mark. The man of God started for Jerusalem, but it was,

Jerusalem, the golden,

The home of God's elect.'

1 Lincoln Scrapbook, p. 52. From Rev. N. W. Miner's conversation with Mrs. Lincoln soon after the assassination. Dr. Miner had been a pastor in Springfield and assisted also in the burial service at Springfield on May 4, 1865.

APPENDIX I

THE FORERUNNER

PETER CARTWRIGHT was the forerunner of Abraham Lincoln. This was the order of Providence. Religious emotion would precede political commotion. The heart had to be warmed before the mind could be convinced. A flame of love had to be kindled before the conscience could be converted.

Peter Cartwright was born in Virginia in 1785 of impecunious parents. His father was a soldier in the Revolutionary War; his mother was a devout Methodist. In 1793 his parents settled in Logan County, Kentucky, near the Tennessee border. Here it was that Jacob Lurton, a travelling Methodist Preacher, one day asked permission to preach in the Cartwright cabin. Peter was in his ninth year and was sent out to invite his neighbours to hear the preacher, thus paralleling the memorable experience in the life of Lincoln at the age of nine, when he went out to invite the neighbours to hear the sermon at his mother's grave.

When the Cartwrights settled in Logan County, there was not a mill within forty miles and no schools. Sunday was a day set apart for hunting, fishing, horseracing, cardplaying, dances, and all kinds of

amusement.

"We killed our own meat out of the woods," says