officers, generals, legislative supporters, and so forth. He could hold them responsible, sharply; but he never really interfered with them, "bothered them,” at their work, or found undue fault with its execution. A false idea obtained circulation at one time concerning his hardness, his exacting dealings with his immediate co-workers and subordinates. Perhaps this arose from the numerous changes made in his civil and military appointments. He was the very reverse of exacting. For illustration, I do not know or believe that he ever found fault with one of his private secretaries in all the onerous and delicate duties with which they were charged. I know that during all the years of my own service he never uttered a criticism or expressed a disapproval, and yet such a mass of work could not possibly have all been perfect. He was the most kindly and lenient of men, even when, through days and days of gloom and overwork, he would pass us, invariably, without speaking, as if we were not there, until business gave us the right to speak.

Did he never at any time reel or stagger under his burden? Oh yes, once. He could feel a hit or a stab at any time; but the things which hurt him, that made him suffer, that were slowly killing him, as he himself declared, did not interfere with the perpetual efficiency of his work. If there were hours when despondency came and when he doubted the result, the final triumph of the national arms, he did not tell anybody; but there was one night when his wrestle with despair was long and terrible.

In the opinion of Edwin M. Stanton, concurred in by other good judges, the darkest hour of the Civil War came in the first week of May, 1863. The Army of the

Potomac, under General Hooker, had fought the bloody battle of Chancellorsville. The record of their dead and wounded told how bravely they had fought; but they were defeated, losing the field of battle, and seventeen thousand men. The Confederate commanders acknowledged a loss of only thirteen thousand, but their Army of Northern Virginia was dreadfully cut up. How severe a disaster this costly victory had been to them could not be understood by the people of the North.

The country was weary of the long war, with its draining taxes of gold and blood. Discontent was everywhere raising its head, and the opponents of the Lincoln administration were savage in their denunciations. Many of his severest critics were men of unquestionable patriotism. The mail desk in the Secretary's office at the White House was heaped with letters, as if the President could read them. He knew their purport well enough without reading. He knew of the forever vacant places in a hundred thousand households before Chancellorsville. If more than a third of each day's mail already consisted of measureless denunciation; if another large part was made up of piteous pleas for peace, for a termination of the long murder of the Civil War, what would it be when tidings of this last slaughter should go out and send back echoes from the heart-stricken multitude? Had not enough been endured, and was there not imminent peril that the country would refuse to endure any more? This question was, perhaps, the darkest element in the problem presented to Mr. Lincoln; for the armies, east or west, were ample in force and ready to fight again.

There were callers at the White House the day on which the news of the defeat was brought; but they

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.

Ir 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