man! When we passed through a field where a few stumps remained cut rather high up, he contrasted that sort of stumping with that in Illinois, and told an incident concerning chopping trees by some public man, which I did not quite hear. Suddenly we saw a little engine named "The Flying Dutchman " fly past us on a railroad track. Mr. Lincoln seeing it and hearing a shrill, wild scream from its saluting whistle, laughed aloud. He doubtless was thinking of John Brown's terrorism of a few years before, for we were near the famous engine-house where John Brown was finally penned up and taken; for, referring to the locomotive, Mr. Lincoln said: "They ought to call that thing The Skeared Virginian'!"

Sprightly as he was in story-telling and in conversation about what he saw around him, he looked to me, as soon as he relapsed into silence, very careworn and very sad. Our victory at Antietam was too little decisive to meet the desire of his heart.

My next interview with Mr. Lincoln was in the spring that succeeded Fredericksburg. I had been assigned by him to the Eleventh Army Corps and was encamped near Brook's Station, a small hamlet on the railroad north of Falmouth. It was in April, 1863, soon after I had gone up there to assume command from the Second Corps, which was located nearer the Rappahannock. My corps was reviewed in the usual manner by Mr. Lincoln, accompanied by General Hooker and a small host of attendants. The corps presented a fine, brilliant appearance along the hills and slopes. The Germans were remarkable for their neatness on parade and for the soldierly salutes which never failed to attract attention. I was congratulated by observing officers upon such a splendid

command. Mr. Lincoln said nothing till just as he was finishing the review, when he remarked to me, inquiringly: "How is it, General Howard, that you have so large a part of your command over there?" He referred to those who appeared to be off duty, and were on the slopes opposite to those in the ranks. Of course, I explained as well as I could how the old guard, the quartermaster's men, the orderlies, cooks and other essential details, had come out to see the President. Mr. Lincoln smiled, and said, gently: "That review yonder is about as big as ours!" His evident criticism was a wholesome one to the young corps commander. Those altogether too large "details" were always a source of great weakness to us in time of battle.

I had my new tent wonderfully pitched by my German pioneers. The approach was a corridor of evergreens. Mr. Lincoln came around to see it, and to chat with me alone for a few minutes. He was now very kind and fatherly. He took notice of my tablets, hung against the rear tent-pole inside. The one for the day, I think, was the beginning of the Twenty-third Psalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want."

I had reason to remember this occasion afterward. After Chancellorsville, several officers high in command, some aspiring, went to Mr. Lincoln at the White House and besought my removal. At General Hooker's tent one day I was made to understand something of this hostile action. I said then, substantially, to Hooker; during a formal visit to his tent: "Whatever you think of doing, I will hereafter simply mind my own business and obey orders." But as I rode back the few miles to my headquarters I was dreadfully depressed. On enter ing my tent I looked up and saw that strong promise,

"The Lord is my Shepherd." "Yes," I said, "why didn't I think of it?" Mr. Lincoln's decision and his flattering remark soon after this were brought to me: "He is a good man. Let him alone; in time he will bring things straight." I felt that Mr. Lincoln's heart beat in sympathy with mine, and I reverenced him greatly. I loved him.

After Gettysburg I received from him a remarkable letter. It was in response to mine urging the advantages of keeping the army under our new commander, General Meade. That letter was long ago published in the Atlantic Monthly. You will remember how two divisions of my corps and two of Slocum's, with our corps organizations preserved, were detached in September, 1863, after Rosecrans's battle of Chickamauga, and sent by rail far West to his neighborhood, with General Hooker commanding the whole detachment. Mr. Lincoln and I, just before my departure, had quite a lengthy talk in his office room at the White House. He had a fine, "wellmounted" map hung upon a firm framework. Mr. Lincoln took me to this map, and questioned me about East Tennessee. He told me how loyal the people of that region were, and asked my opinion about getting our forces in there, so as to hold the country permanently. Just as I was leaving I asked him where he obtained his map, showing him mine. "Here, General," he said, "take this. Yours will do for me. Mine will be better for you, as it will stand more wear and tear.”

His parting words I cannot recall, but the impression of them was never effaced. They gave me a knowledge of his confidence and a belief in his personal interest and affection. Abraham Lincoln was worthy to be trusted and to be loved by all his countrymen.

PORTLAND, ORE.

LINCOLN'S VIGIL.

THE DEFEAT OF CHANCELLORSVILLE.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD,

PRIVATE SECRETARY TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

THEY seem far away and almost unreal, as if they had never been, those long, overheated years with Lincoln in the White House. Very few remain of the men whose names and faces are associated in memory with the events of that time. Yet it often seems strange, unnatural, to find that the people met and talked with in every-day life, all of them who are of less than middle age, are but vaguely informed concerning those events and the actors in them. Probably most of these must, indeed, be forgotten, they were so many and there is so much else that this generation must needs study and always assume to know.

One tall figure, however, still stands forth, distinctly visible always, as if it belonged to the present as much as to the past and would march along forever, keeping step, shoulder to shoulder, with the continuous history of the Republic.

Lincoln cannot be forgotten. He is even better and better understood by thinking men. But there seems to be floating around, in the minds of many, something of

the idea so curiously presented by one of the dead President's old Illinois neighbors:

"Linkin?" said the prairie man; "oh yes, I knowed him. Knowed his folks, too. They was torn-down poor. He wasn't much up to the War; that was what made him. Tell ye what, they wouldn't let on so much 'bout him now, 'f he hadn't been killed. That helped him, powerful. People kind o' sympathized with him, ye know. It made him pop'lar. He saved suthin' w'ile he was President, but I don't reckon he left much proppity. Oh yes, I knowed Linkin.”

In strong contrast with this crude scepticism is the marvellous keenness of the general popular instinct which then recognized, accepted, trusted and sustained its Godappointed leader. That he was of God's appointment must be apparent to any man whose creed contains a confession of a living God, mindful of human affairs.

It may be noted, without any surprise whatever, that many intelligent persons who had associated with Lincoln in his earlier years were never, to the end, able to see anything but what may be called their first mental photographs of him, badly taken, on defective negatives. These were at best but surface pictures and contained only something of the man as he was seen before, say, the year 1858. One of his oldest, most intimate professional associates and latest biographers, for instance, was hardly acquainted with him at all; for he did not even see him after 1860.

During long years prior to the War, the actual growth of so deep and strong a nature was necessarily hidden, even from himself; and when its disclosure came, through trial after trial, there was something of surprise attaching to each successive manifestation of capacity. His