Part 9 (1/2)

Here is the Mana.s.sas country--here the long reach of the wasted Shenandoah; here the wavy line of the James and the sinuous peninsula.

The wide campagna of the gulf country sways in the Potomac breeze that filters in at the window, and the Mississippi climbs up the wall, with blotches of blue and red to show where blood gushed at the bursting of deadly bombs. So, in the half-gloomy, half-grand apartment, roamed the tall and wrinkled figure whom the country had summoned from his plain home into mighty history, with the geography of the republic drawn into a narrow compa.s.s so that he might lay his great brown hand upon it everywhere. And walking to and fro, to and fro, to measure the destinies of arms, he often stopped, with his thoughtful eyes upon the carpet, to ask if his life were real and if he were the arbiter of so tremendous issues, or whether it was not all a fever-dream, s.n.a.t.c.hed from his sofa in the routine office of the Prairie state.

There is but one picture on the marble mantel over the cold grate--John Bright, a photograph.

I can well imagine how the mind of Mr. Lincoln often went afar to the face of Bright, who said so kindly things of him when Europe was mocking his homely guise and provincial phraseology. To Mr. Lincoln, John Bright was the standard-bearer of America and democracy in the old world. He thrilled over Bright's bold denunciations of peer and ”Privilege,” and stretched his long arm across the Atlantic to take that daring Quaker innovator by the hand.

I see some books on the table; perhaps they have lain there undisturbed since the reader's dimming eyes grew nerveless. A parliamentary manual, a Thesaurus, and two books of humor, ”Orpheus C. Kerr,” and ”Artemus Ward.” These last were read by Mr. Lincoln in the pauses of his hard day's labor. Their tenure here bears out the popular verdict of his partiality for a good joke; and, through the window, from the seat of Mr. Lincoln, I see across the gra.s.sy grounds of the capitol, the broken shaft of the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument, the long bridge and the fort-tipped Heights of Arlington, reaching down to the s.h.i.+ning river side. These scenes he looked at often to catch some freshness of leaf and water, and often raised the sash to let the world rush in where only the nation abided, and hence on that awful night, he departed early, to forget this room and its close applications in the _abandon_ of the theater.

I wonder if that were the least of Booth's crimes--to slay this public servant in the stolen hour of recreation he enjoyed but seldom. We worked his life out here, and killed him when he asked a holiday.

Outside of this room there is an office, where his secretaries sat--a room more narrow but as long--and opposite this adjacent office, a second door, directly behind Mr. Lincoln's chair leads by a private pa.s.sage to his family quarters. This pa.s.sage is his only monument in the building; he added nor subtracted nothing else; it tells a long story of duns and loiterers, contract-hunters and seekers for commissions, garrulous parents on paltry errands, toadies without measure and talkers without conscience. They pressed upon him through the great door opposite his window, and hat in hand, come courtsying to his chair, with an obsequious ”Mr. President!”

If he dared, though the chief magistrate and commander of the army and navy, to go out of the great door, these vampires leaped upon him with their Babylonian pleas, and barred his walk to his hearthside. He could not insult them since it was not in his nature, and perhaps many of them had really urgent errands. So he called up the carpenter and ordered a strategic route cut from his office to his hearth, and perhaps told of it after with much merriment.

Here should be written the biography of his official life--in the room where have concentrated all the wires of action, and where have proceeded the resolves which vitalized in historic deeds. But only the great measures, however carried out, were conceived in this office. The little ones proceeded from other places..

Here once came Mr. Stanton, saying in his hard and positive way:

”Mr. Lincoln, I have found it expedient to disgrace and arrest General Stone.”

”Stanton,” said Mr. Lincoln, with an emotion of pain, ”when you considered it necessary to imprison General Stone, I am glad you did not consult me about it.”

And for lack of such consultation, General Stone, I learn, now lies a maniac in the asylum. The groundless pretext, upon which he suffered the reputation of treason, issued from the Department of War--not from this office.

But as to his biography, it is to be written by Colonel Nicolay and Major Hay. They are to go to Paris together, one as attache of legation, the other as consul, and while there, will undertake the labor. They are the only men who know his life well enough to exhaust it, having followed his official tasks as closely as they shared his social hours.

Major Hay is a gentleman of literary force. Colonel Nicolay has a fine judgment of character and public measures. Together they should satisfy both curiosity and history.

As I hear from my acquaintances here these episodes of the President's life, I recall many reminiscences of his ride from Springfield to Harrisburg, over much of which I pa.s.sed. Then he left home and became an inhabitant of history. His face was solid and healthy, his step young, his speech and manner bold and kindly. I saw him at Trenton stand in the Legislature, and say, in his conversational intonation:

”We may have to put the foot down firm.”

How should we have hung upon his accents then had we antic.i.p.ated his virtues and his fate.

Death is requisite to make opinion grave. We looked upon Mr. Lincoln then as an amusing sensation, and there was much guffaw as he was regarded by the populace; he had not pa.s.sed out of partisan owners.h.i.+p.

Little by little, afterward, he won esteem, and often admiration, until the measure of his life was full, and the victories he had achieved made the world applaud him. Yet, at this date, the President was sadly changed. Four years of perplexity and devotion had wrinkled his face, and stooped his shoulders, and the failing eyes that glared upon the play closed as his mission was completed, and the world had been educated enough to comprehend him.

The White House has been more of a Republican mansion under his control than for many administrations. Uncouth guests came to it often, typical of the simple western civilization of which he was a graduate, and while no coa.r.s.e altercation has ever ensued, the portal has swung wide for five years.

A friend, connected with a Was.h.i.+ngton newspaper, told me that he had occasion to see Mr. Lincoln one evening, and found that the latter had gone to bed. But he was told to sit down in the office, and directly the President entered. He wore only a night s.h.i.+rt, and his long, lank hirsute limbs, as he sat down, inclined the guest to laughter. Mr.

Lincoln disposed of his request at once, and manifested a desire to talk. So he reached for the cane which my friend carried and conversed in this manner:

”I always used a cane when I was a boy. It was a freak of mine. My favorite one was a knotted beech stick, and I carved the head myself.

There's a mighty amount of character in sticks. Don't you think so? You have seen these fis.h.i.+ng poles that fit into a cane? Well, that was an old idea of mine. Dogwood clubs were favorite ones with the boys. I 'spose they use'em yet. Hickory is too heavy, unless you get it from a young sapling. Have you ever noticed how a stick in one's hand will change his appearance? Old women and witches would'nt look so without sticks. Meg Merrilies understands that.”

In this way my friend, who is a clerk, in a newspaper office, heard the President talk for an hour. The undress of the man and the witness of his subject would be staples for merriment if we did not reflect that his greatness was of no conventional cast, that the playfulness of his nature and the simplicity of his ill.u.s.tration lightened public business but never arrested it.