on his way to the War Office, he stopped to give a greeting to a couple of pet goats that waited for his recognition. While thus engaged, one of the party stepped up and said, "Mr. Lincoln, will you allow me to introduce to you two Massachusetts women." He drew himself up to his full height, swept his hand over his face, and said, "Yes, bring them along." We came, and were introduced. He chatted pleasantly until we grew frightened, and begged him not to allow us to intrude upon his time. We felt, it was said, that it would be a great pleasure to shake hands with our honored Chief Magistrate, here, beneath God's open heaven, and on this green grass. "Ah!" said he, waiting a moment, "such a privilege is worth contending for," and then, assuring us of his pleasure to greet the people, he passed on to his laborious tasks. Well has it been said, "No one who approached him, whether as minister or messenger, felt impelled either to stoop or strut in his presence." Edward Everett, after observing his bearing, at Gettysburg, among the Cabinet and foreign ministers, the Governor, and other notables, pronounced him the peer, in deportment, of any one present. He was an affectionate man. He never forgot a favor or a friend. The men he loved before he was President, he loved even more tenderly after he learned the value of their disinterested affection. He was a temperance man, and never used intoxicating liquors, or tobacco. After his return from Richmond, we are told, a cask of old whiskey, taken from the cellar of one of the southern grandees, was brought to the War Office, and opened. He was urged to take it in honor of the occasion. He declined, and thus refused to lend the influence of his name and position to the support of a practice which has wrought such immense mischief in the Army and in the State. In the poem which he was so fond of repeating, and which he learned when a young man, you discover a key which unlocks many of the mysteries of that marvellous life. There is a charm in them which will repay perusal not only because of their intrinsic beauty, but because when we read them we seem to get near his great and loving heart: Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud? The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, And the young and the old, and the low and the high, The infant a mother attended and loved; The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne ; The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap; The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep; The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread; So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed So the multitude comes, even those we behold, For we are the same our fathers have been; The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think; They loved, but the story we cannot unfold; They died, ay! they died; we, things that are now, And make in their dwellings a transient abode, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road. Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, A man that revolved such thoughts in his mind was not likely to be elated by his position or place. There is one more fact which deserves to be mentioned, because it places the last stone upon the monumental pile of his greatness. He took time daily to peruse his Bible, and was often found up at four o'clock in the early morning holding communion with the Father of Lights in his word. Such is the character which America at this time places in her gilded bark of hope, and sends down the current of time to the distant future. Whoever in Europe or Asia or Africa shall behold its heavenenkindling look, will find the face of him whose "Patient toil Had robed our cause in victory's light, "A martyr to the cause of man, His blood is freedom's eucharist, And in the World's great hero-list His name shall lead the van. "Yea! raised on faith's white wings, unfurled He fell upon the self-same day A Greater died to save the world." |