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LINCOLN'S WORK-ROOM, IN THE WHITE HOUSE,

CHAPTER XLII.

THE HARDEST BLOW.

Home-Life in the White House-Death of Little Willie-Proclamation of Thanksgiving and Prayer-Circular Letter to the Army on Sabbath Keeping-Spiritual Growth.

THE year 1862 was a period of rapid growth for Abraham Lincoln. It was a cup filled to overflowing with trials of every kind and nature.

He was calling upon all the families in the land to send their sons to die upon the many battle-fields of the war, and the responsibility of that sacred but awful duty weighed heavily upon him. He was in the kind of furnace whose fires either harden a man or burn away the dross from the better metal of his composition. It is well to study the process, somewhat, in order to obtain a clearer perception of the result.

There could be but little of home life at the White House. It was the business centre of a vast and growing web of civil and military offices and operations. Nevertheless, it was all the home the President could have. His wife presided over the few apartments reserved for family uses and hospitalities. There were social features attached to the duties of the Executive, but these, for the greater part, assumed a public and official character.

Nearly to the end of the first year of Mr. Lincoln's term, there had been one brightness in and about the rooms and offices which at times gave them almost a home-like look, for his two younger boys came and went, through all of them, at their own childish will. The elder of these children, Willie, was a peculiarly promising boy, and Thomas, or "Tad,"

the younger, was full of merry mischief, the ludicrous effect of which was in no wise lessened by the impediment in his speech whenever he was called to an account. That was

not very often, indeed, nor a very serious matter for him or his brother. Tad could explore the garret, discovering the place where all the bell-wires in the house were attached to a central pinion, and could set all bells, and all human answerers of bells, in futile motion. Willie could slit into ribbons the cloth covering of the private secretary's table. Both or either could come and stand by their father's knee, at times, when grave statesmen and pompous generals were presenting to him matters of national or world-wide importance. Such rebukes as might occasionally be administered to them savored very little of "army discipline." They were of more value to their father and to his work than anybody knew, even then. But they were to render a greater and a higher service.

In February, 1862, while Mr. Lincoln was straining every nerve to obtain from General McClellan the forward movement of the army which a discontented people so loudly demanded, the boys were taken sick and little Willie died.

The White House was a gloomy place during the illness of the children, but it was none the less a busy one. All work went on as usual. If the President left his office to visit the sick-room, it was only to return again and meet as before the hourly tribulations of his unrelaxing service of his country. Even the presence of death in the house could not privilege him to remit for one moment his supervision of all the multitudinous life and death intrusted to his care by the people he was ruling.

It is impossible for any man or woman who has never passed through some such trial to grasp and comprehend the inner experiences which surely came to Mr. Lincoln at that time. A multitude of those who have endured corresponding ordeals will need no other key to the understanding of some of his subsequent utterances.

The good lady who acted as nurse for the little sufferers relates that their father came in, at times, to watch by them, and that on one occasion he walked up and down the room, saying sadly: "This is the hardest trial of my life! Why is it? Why is it?"

It was not merely a selfish expression of petulant sorrow. Just so he was accustomed to walk up and down, in his great Executive work-room, alone, at night, after the news had come of some great battle, whether a victory or defeat. It was late, indeed, when the sound of his slow, heavy, griefladen footsteps ceased, on the nights after Ball's Bluff, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg, and in each case the agonized question upon his lips must have been the same.

To all such questions, when honestly asked, there is an answer, although it may not always be heard at once. A part of it seems to have been sent to Mr. Lincoln through this very lady. Numbers of kind, good people who knew it did their best to send it to him. Dr. J. G. Holland records of her that, after the worst had come and the stroke had fallen, when she told Mr. Lincoln, in conversation, her own story of trial; that she was a widow, all alone, her husband and two children being in heaven; she added that she saw the hand of God in it all, and had never loved Him before her affliction as she had since.

Mr. Lincoln inquired of her: "How is that brought about?" She replied: "Simply by trusting in God and feeling that He does all things well."

He asked: "Did you submit fully under the first loss?"

Little she may have guessed what memories of suffering were lurking behind the few words of that simple question. She did not know what shattering of the very reason and clouding of the brain of the man before her had resulted from his inability to "submit fully under the first loss." That had been long ago, and she was thinking only of the present. She answered:

"Not wholly ; but as blow came upon blow, and all was taken, I could and did submit, and was very happy."

He responded: "I am glad to hear you say that. Your experience will help me to bear my afflictions." He had determined to imitate her and to fully submit, now blow upon blow had come.

On the morning of the funeral of Willie, he said of the prayers offered for him by the good people all over the land: "I am glad to hear that. I want them to pray for me. I need their prayers."

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That to theirs he added his own is also a matter of record: and yet there have been, and perhaps now are, men and women so grossly ignorant of human nature as to suppose that such an effect, so produced upon such a man, and followed by an increasing instead of diminishing attrition of toil and trial, was or could be other than eternally indelible.

A few weeks later, before the grass grew well upon the grave of little Willie, occurred the terrific fighting and slaughter of Shiloh and Corinth, in which victory was wrested from the jaws of defeat at the cost of the sons of thousands of darkened households. It was an occasion for thankfulness, and Mr. Lincoln issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for that and other victories, asking the people to "render thanks to our Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings."

The thanks were sincere, for the gleams of light from the West were greatly needed in those days of national darkness and depression; but the lesson of the President's personal trial followed in the plain words which directed those who offered thanks also to "implore spiritual consolation in behalf of all those who have been brought into affliction by the casualties and calamities of civil war."

Not then, perhaps not now, could Southern fathers and mothers accept the idea that he could not possibly have excluded them, in his mental vision of the sufferers who were in need of "spiritual consolation," but they were no more ex

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