amination of voluminous documents. Pushing everything aside. he said to one of the party:

"Have you seen the Nasby papers?'

"No, I have not,' was the reply; 'who is Nasby?'

"There is a chap out in Ohio,' returned the president, 'who has been writing a series of letters in the newspapers over the signature of Petroleum V. Nasby. Some one sent me a pamphlet collection of them the other day. I am going to write to "Petroleum" to come down here, and I intend to tell him if he will communicate his talent to me, I will swap places with him!' "Thereupon he arose, went to a drawer in his desk, and, tak ing out the 'Letters,' sat down and read one to the company, finding in their enjoyment of it the temporary excitement and relief which another man would have found in a glass of wine. The instant he had ceased, the book was thrown aside, his countenance relapsed into its habitual serious expression, and the business was entered upon with the utmost earnestness."

Concerning Lincoln's love for the Nasby letters written by David R. Locke of the Toledo Blade, there is abundant testimony. These letters with their atrocious spelling were mostly dated at "Confederate X Roads which is in the State of Kentucky." Their author, the Reverend Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, was alleged to be pastor of a congregation in that place. His pastoral duties however, occupied small place in his correspondence. He was a seeker after political honors from the local postmastership to the presidency. Lincoln read these letters as they appeared from week to week. When the first group of them was issued in pamphlet form he read and reread the letters both for his own edification and the instruction of his friends. It is interesting to find him reading them to the dignified Senator Charles Sumner. So impressed was the Massachusetts Senator with Lincoln's love of this literature that the Senator

*The real name of "Orpheus C. Kerr" was Robert H. Newell. He published one volume of sketches in 1862, and another in 1863. Both of those Lincoln read and enjoyed. A third volume was published later.

himself consented to write the introduction to a collected edition of the Nasby letters issued in 1872. Senator Sumner's story of Lincoln's love for this literature constitutes the closing portion of this introduction:

I had occasion to see President Lincoln very late in the evening of March 17, 1865. The interview was in the familiar room known as his office, and was also used for cabinet meetings. I did not take leave of him until sometime after midnight, and then the business was not entirely finished. As I rose, he said, "Come to me when I open shop in the morning; I will have the order written, and you shall see it." "When do you open shop?" said I. "At nine o'clock," he replied. At the hour named I was in the same room I had so recently left. Very soon the President entered, stepping quickly with the promised order in his hands which he at once read to me. It was to disapprove and annul the judgment and sentence of a court-martial in a case that had excited much feeling. While I was making an abstract for telegraph to the anxious parties, he broke into a quotation from Nasby. Finding me less at home than himself with his favorite humorist, he said pleasantly, "I must initiate you." And then he repeated with enthusiasm the message he had sent to the author:

"For the genius to write these things, I would gladly give up my office."

Rising from his seat, he opened a desk behind, and, taking from it a pamphlet collection of the letters already published read with infinite zest, in which his melancholy features grew bright. It was a delight to see him surrender so completely to the fascination. Finding that I listened, he read for more than twenty minutes, and was still proceeding, when it occurred to him that there must be many at the door waiting to see him on graver matters. Taking advantage of a pause, I rose, and, thanking him for the lesson of the morning, went away. Some thirty persons, including senators and representatives were in the ante-room as I passed out. Though with the president much during the intervening time before his death, this was the last business I transacted with him. A few days later he left Washington for City Point, in the James River, where he was at the surrender of Richmond. April 6, I joined him there. April 9,

the party returned to Washington. On the evening of April 14, the bullet of an assassin took his life. In this simple story, Abraham Lincoln introduces Nasby.

Lincoln's love for the writings of Artemus Ward was very great. He loved the autobiographical sketches by the proprietor of the "highly moral show" with which Artemus professed to be touring the country, and of his various adventures when en route. His "wax figgers" afforded him opportunity to discuss various historic characters. When the crowd pulled the hay out of the fat man, the palpable fraud which Artemus had been perpetrating caused the president to roar with appreciation. The kangaroo, "that amusin' little cuss," could be counted on now and then for a flying adventure, and Artemus had a "boy-constrictor" that was useful on occasion. But Artemus did not confine his discussions to the show business. He professed to have visited Washington and the White House, where he roundly lectured the office seekers for bothering Old Abe when they ought to have been in better business. He drove them out by threatening to turn his "boy-constrictor" in among them. When, according to this facetious narrative, Lincoln in gratitude asked the advice of Artemus about the composition of his Cabinet, Artemus advised him to select its members wholly from showmen-"Showmen are all honest; for particulars see small bills."

Artemus also journeyed to Richmond, according to these narratives, and interviewed Jefferson Davis, whom he scolded soundly for attempting to break up the Union. He opined "that it would have been ten dollars in Jeff's pocket if he had never been born." Meat was so scarce in the hotels in Richmond that Artemus forbore to order steak or roast; horses, cats and dogs, he averred, were substituting for those luxuries in the Richmond hotels. So Artemus ordered hash; then he knew just what he was getting.

Artemus was a patriot; he was determined to put down the rebellion if in the effort he sacrificed all his wife's relations. He was troubled for a time in Washington, to discover what the

initials M. C. stood for, at length he learned. They stood for the title "Miserable Cuss."

When Charles Brockden Browne began writing these letters for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he probably had little intention of going into military or political matters. He may or may not have known that the name he chose for himself, Artemus Ward. was, except for a slight variation in spelling, the name of a Revolutionary general.

Much of the quality which caused his humor to be most appreciated in its day was due to current interest in matters concerning which taste has changed and memory of events grown dim. But a student of the period of the Civil War would have no difficulty in understanding Lincoln's appreciation of this war-time humor. Artemus Ward may not have gone the full length of his generous offer in sacrificing all of his wife's relations to the putting down of the rebellion. But his broad wholesome humor together with his understanding of military and political conditions and his intelligent sympathy with Lincoln in the burdens he was bearing certainly contributed effectively to that result. He did help put down the rebellion.

CHAPTER XXX

MRS. LINCOLN

THE tomb at Oak Ridge received the mortal remains of Abraham Lincoln, and left his widow in her almost solitary grief. How alone she was, and how worse than useless was some of the advice she had, is pitifully evidenced in a book that betrayed her confidence and proclaimed to the public her aberrations and follies. Not yet has the world been just to her. I should like, if I can, to give a fair and truthful picture of that much abused

*

woman.

If the light that beats upon a throne is such as to reveal every sad frailty of him who occupies it, the light that glances upon and within the White House is still more cruelly searching. Not without reason has the presidency been declared a man-killing job. The bullet has killed three of our presidents; but these are not our only presidential murders. It is no part of the prerogative of this book to compile a list of them.

But if we are unintentionally cruel to our presidents, what shall be said of the manner in which we treat their wives? Who among them has escaped idle curiosity and even spiteful slander, from staid Martha Washington and gay Dolly Madison down to the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and Mrs. Warren C. Harding?

No woman who has occupied the White House has been more vulnerable to attack than Mary Todd Lincoln; and no one of them, unless possibly the wife of President Andrew Jackson, suffered such merciless slander. The time has come when it

*Behind the Scenes, by Elizabeth Keckly.