were not the customary throng. Members of the Senate and House came, with gloomy faces; the members of the Cabinet came, to consult or to condole with the President. There were army and navy officers, but only such as were sent for. The house was as if a funeral were going forward, and those who entered or left it trod softly, as people always do around a coffin, for fear they may wake the dead.

That night, the last visitors in Lincoln's room were Stanton and Halleck. They went away together in silence, at somewhere near nine o'clock, and the President was left alone. Not another soul was on that floor except the one secretary, who was busy with the mail in his room across the hall from the President's; and the doors of both rooms were ajar, for the night was warm. The silence was so deep that the ticking of a clock would have been noticeable; but another sound came that was almost as regular and ceaseless.

It was the

tread of the President's feet as he strode slowly back and forth across the chamber in which so many Presidents of the United States had done their work. Was he to be the last of the line? The last President of the entire United States? At that hour that very question had been asked of him by the battle of Chancellorsville. If he had wavered, if he had failed in faith or courage or prompt decision, then the nation, and not the Army of the Potomac, would have lost its great battle.

Ten o'clock came, without a break in the steady march, excepting now and then a pause in turning at either wall.

There was an unusual accumulation of letters, for that was a desk hard worked with other duties also, and it was necessary to clear it before leaving it. It seemed

as if they contained a double allowance of denunciation, threats, ribaldry. Some of them were hideous, some were tear-blistered. Some would have done Lincoln good if he could have read them; but, over there in his room, he was reading the lesson of Chancellorsville and the future of the Republic. Eleven o'clock came, and then another hour of that ceaseless march so accustomed the ear to it that when, a little after twelve, there was a break of several minutes, the sudden silence made one put down letters and listen.

The President may have been at his table writing, or he may no man knows or can guess; but at the end of the minutes, long or short, the tramp began again. Two o'clock, and he was walking yet, and when, a little after three, the secretary's task was done and he slipped noiselessly out, he turned at the head of the stairs for a moment. It was so- the last sound he heard as he went down was the footfall in Lincoln's room.

He

That was not all, however. The young man had need to return early, and he was there again before eight o'clock. The President's room door was open and he went in. There sat Mr. Lincoln eating breakfast alone. He had not been out of his room; but there was a kind of cheery, hopeful, morning light on his face, instead of the funereal battle-cloud from Chancellorsville. had watched all night, but a dawn had come, for beside his cup of coffee lay the written draft of his instructions to General Hooker to push forward, to fight again. There was a decisive battle won that night in that long vigil with disaster and despair. Only a few weeks later the Army of the Potomac fought it over again as desperately and they won it-at Gettysburg.

MADISON, N. J.

E

INCIDENTS OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S SYM

PATHY.

THE BOY WHO ROBBED THE MAILS-THE EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS THE BOY WHO WANTED TO BE A PAGE CLOSE DISTRICTS.

BY THE HON. ALEXANDER H. RICE,

FORMERLY MEMBER OF CONGRESS AND GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS.

It happened that a mercantile firm in Boston had an office boy whose duty, among other things, was to take the mail to and from the post office. This boy was fresh from the country and was dazzled by the apparent wealth of everybody in the city, without having any very definite ideas of how competency is attained; and seeing his opportunity to get money from the letters entrusted to him, he yielded to the temptation and fell into the habit of thus stealing money, was detected, convicted and imprisoned; but the employers of the boy and the jury that convicted him felt kindly disposed, and joined with the boy's father, after some months had elapsed, in an effort to obtain the boy's pardon. As his offence was against the National Government, the application must, of course, be made to the President. For that purpose the father appeared in Washington equipped with a petition for the pardon of his son which was numerously signed

by the jurors and many citizens of Massachusetts, and asked me to accompany him to the White House, which I did, and introduced him to the President, to whom also I handed the petition. Mr. Lincoln put on his spectacles, threw himself back in his chair and stretched his long legs to their utmost extent, and thus read the document. When finished, he turned to me and asked if I met a man on the stairs going down as I came up, and I said that I did. "Well," said Mr. Lincoln, “he was the last man in this room before you came and his errand was to get a man pardoned out of the penitentiary, and now you come to get a boy out of jail. I am bothered to death," said he, "about these pardon cases; but I am a little encouraged by your visit. They are after me on the men, but appear to be roping you in on the boys. What shall we do? The trouble appears to come from the courts. Let's abolish the courts, and I think that will end the difficulty. And it seems as if the courts ought to be abolished, anyway; for they appear to pick out the very best men in the community and send them to the penitentiary, and now they are after the same kind of boys. According to that man's testimony who was just in here, there are few men so upright as his client; and I don't know much about boys in Massachusetts, but according to this petition there are not many such boys as this one outside the Sundayschools in other parts of the country." Then assuming more gravity he asked the father what he intended to do with the boy if released; and the reply was that the boy had had quite enough of the city and would be content to go upon the farm where he would hereafter stay. The President finally said that if a majority of the Members of the Massachusetts delegation in Congress would sign

the petition, he would then pardon the boy. This was done, and I never heard of the boy afterward.

After the Congressional election, in 1862, my seat in Congress was contested by an estimable old gentleman who differed from his constituents, and with the evidence in the case, by supposing that he and not I was elected to the Congress. The matter of contest was reported upon by the Committee on Elections in my favor, and their report was affirmed by the House. At the next following election my old friend and myself were again opposed to each other as candidates, and I led him at the polls nearly 4000 votes; to be more exact, by 3600+. It is remarkable how fully apprised of the trend of politics in different localities Mr. Lincoln kept himself. With all his labors and anxieties he kept his finger always upon the public pulse and appeared to know the "close districts and the "certain " ones throughout the country. On my return to Washington, after that election, I chanced one day to pass the White House just as the President was coming out, and he hailed me, saying: "Well, your district is a good deal like a jug, after all—the handle is all on one side." He then proceeded to tell me that he was at the War Department when a dispatch came in saying that Rice was re-elected by more than three thousand plurality, and Mr. Lincoln said to those present, That can't be, for he has one of the closest districts in the country. While they were commenting upon the matter another dispatch from another source came saying, Rice elected by nearly four thousand plurality. Well, said Mr. Lincoln, if that is the way in which the doubtful districts are coming in he guessed he would not stop to hear from the certain ones.