"Blenkered" a term quite common just now, in the army, for anything stolen. It came into use soon after General Blenker's division passed down the Shenandoah Valley.' Appeared in the National Republican, Jan. 24, 1864, subscribed "John Hay, Executive Mansion, Washington," the poem: 1 "Our love shall go to meet them. And the fame of their endeavor Time and change shall not dissever When the boys come home." General Louis Blenker. He was Colonel of the 8th N. Y. Regiment. He had command of the German Division of the Army of the Potomac. He was stationed at all times not far from the City of Washington. He was relieved of command in 1862; mustered out March, 1863. His death in the Intelligencer is mentioned, November 5, 1863. The first summer and all the summers the President lived at the Soldiers' Home. A California lady says that with the President in a carriage passing through the tree-arcaded approach to the mansion another lady caught a bit of green from an intruding branch. The lady who caught it claimed it to be cedar; another lady claimed it to be spruce. Said Mr. Lincoln: "Let me discourse on a theme I understand. I know all about trees in right of being a backwoodsman. I'll show you the difference between spruce, pine and cedar, and this shred of green which is neither one nor the other, but a kind of illegitimate cypress.' I cannot improve by paraphrasing and I will quote exactly from Walt Whitman's Specimen Days, August 12, 1863. 2 "I see the President almost every day, as I happen to live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He never sleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters at a healthy location some three miles north of the city, the Soldiers' Home, a United States military establishment. I saw him this morning about 81⁄2 coming in to business, riding on Vermont Avenue, near L Street. He always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, with sabres drawn and held upright over their shoulders. They say this guard was against his personal wishes, but he let his counselors have their way. The party makes no great show in uniforms or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the saddle generally rides a good-sized easy-going gray horse, is dress'd in plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and looks about as ordinary in attire, &c. as the commonest man. A lieutenant, with yellow straps, rides at his left and following behind, two by two, come the cavalry men. in their yellow-striped jackets. They are generally going at a slow trot, as that is the pace set them by the one they must wait upon. The sabres and accoutrements San Francisco Bulletin. 2 1407 L Street N.W. clank, and the entirely unornamental cortège as it trots toward Lafayette Square arouses no sensation, only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see very plainly ABRAHAM LINCOLN's dark brown face, with deep-cut lines, the eyes, always to me with a deep, latent sadness in the expression. We have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes the President goes and comes in a barouche. The cavalry always accompany him, with drawn sabres. Often I notice as he goes out evenings-and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early-he turns off and halts at the large and handsome residence of the Secretary of War, on K Street,' and holds conference there. If in his barouche, I can see from my window he does not alight, but sits in the vehicle, and Mr. Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. In the summer I occasionally saw the President and his wife, toward the latter part of the afternoons, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride through the city. Mrs. Lincoln was dressed in complete black, with a long crape veil. The equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses, and they nothing extra. They passed me once very close, and I saw the President in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his look, though abstracted, happened to be directed steadily in my eye. He bowed and smiled but far beneath his smile, I noticed well the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle or indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed." When in front of Secretary Stanton's, Mr. Lincoln now and then saw a large crowd-and enthusiasticarranged in a circle in Franklin Square. Great shouts rended the air. Mr. Lincoln knew the all but daily occurrence was not a raising on a mighty staff the national 11325 K Street N.W. |