I arrived in Washington early on a crisp December morning, just a few days before Christmas. I went straightway to the old Ebbit House, which was then the fashionable gathering2 place for military people stationed or sojourning in the capital. The contrast between “desk officers” and officers in the field was even greater then than in more recent days, because if the former were less smart in appearance than the modern “citified” officer, the latter were, as a rule, vastly more disheveled[Pg 25] and disreputable in appearance than one would find in any army of to-day on campaign. There were good reasons for this, of course, but they did not greatly help to increase the confidence of a decidedly “seedy”-looking young officer fresh from the swamps and thickets3 of North Carolina. I was glad to get away from the environs of the Ebbit House after a brief but very earnest effort to “spruce up.”
When the time at last arrived that the ordeal4 was directly ahead, I plucked up courage and walked up the footpath5 to the White House with a tolerably certain step. Even at the height of the war President Lincoln did not surround himself by the barriers which later Executives have found necessary. One simply went to the White House, stated his business, and waited his turn for an interview.
Once inside that building, however, my earlier timidity returned tenfold. I had agreed that morning with the local correspondent of the New York Tribune to get[Pg 26] all the material I could from Lincoln for an interview for his paper. I trembled as with a chill when I told the doorkeeper that I wished to see the President, and when the official coldly ordered me to “come in and sit over there, in that row,” I began to doubt whether I was to be arrested for intrusion. The anteroom was crowded with important-looking people, all waiting for an interview with Lincoln. I wondered if I would ever get within sight of his door.
Presently, however, the President’s personal secretary entered the room, and passing along the line of visitors with a notebook, asked each to state his business with the President. I showed my pass and in a few words explained my errand, even mustering6 up courage to emphasize the urgency of the case.
The secretary disappeared, and there was an awkward half hour of waiting. Finally he returned by a side door and, calling out my name, directed me in an[Pg 27] official way to “come in at once” ahead of all the others. When I had passed into the vestibule the secretary shut the reception-room door behind us and, pointing to a door at the other side of the room, said, hastily: “That is the President’s door. Go over, rap on the door, and walk right in.” He then hurried out at a side door and left me alone.
Thus abandoned, I felt faint with terror, embarrassment8, and conflicting decisions. It was a most painful ordeal to be left to go in alone to meet the august head of the nation—to rush alone into the privacy of the commander-in-chief of all the loyal armies of the union. It was an especially trying period of the war which we had just passed through. Sherman’s march to the sea was still in progress. The President had not yet received the historic telegram in which General Sherman offered him the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift, but he was well aware of the thorough devastation9 which that army left in its[Pg 28] wake; and while he understood its necessity, the thought filled him with deepest gloom. Hood’s Confederate army, which threatened for a time to repeat the successes of General Kirby Smith, had been crushed in Tennessee, but only after a period of suspense10 which stretched the nerves of all in administration circles to within a degree of the breaking point. In addition to this the voices of the “defeatists”—“Copperheads,” they were called then—were heard far and wide in the land, ranting11 and howling their demand for a peace which would have been premature12 and inconclusive. The cares and sorrows of the President had hardly been more severe during the most critical days of the war than they were in December, 1864—it was the dark just before the dawn.
Whether to turn and run for the street, to stand still, or to force myself to rap on that awful door was a question filling my soul with frightful13 emotions. I rubbed my head and walked several times across[Pg 29] the vestibule to regain14 possession of my normal faculties15. No one who has not been placed in such a startling situation can begin to realize what a stage-struck heartache afflicted16 me. I had been under fire and heard the shells crack and the bullets sing, but none of those experiences, so awful to a green soldier, had so filled my being with a desire to run away. But I recalled the fact that the President had the reputation of being a plain man to whom any citizen could speak on the street and was kind-hearted to an almost feminine degree, so I wiped my brow and at last drove myself over to the door. There, with the desperation such as the suicide must feel as he leaps from the cliff, I rapped hesitatingly on the door.
Instantly a strong voice from inside shouted, “Come in and sit down.” It was a command rather than an invitation.
I turned the knob weakly and entered, almost on tiptoe. There at the side of a long table sat the same lank17 individual[Pg 30] who spoke18 at the Cooper union four years before. The pallor of his face and the prominence19 of the cheek bones seemed even more striking in contrast with the full beard than when he was clean shaven. But his hair was as sadly disturbed and his clothing had the same lack of style and fitness. An old gray shawl had fallen across one corner of the table, where also lay numerous rolls of papers. The President did not look up when I stepped in and hesitatingly sat down in the chair nearest the door.
That close application to the task before him was a characteristic of Lincoln which has not been emphasized by his biographers as it could and should have been. To quote his own words, whenever he read a book he “exhausted it.” It seems to be the one great trait of character which lifted him above the common clay from which he came. Lincoln had no inheritance worth recording20. He once wrote to his partner that what little talent, money, and[Pg 31] learning he had was “purloined or picked up.”
Surely, never among the surprises which one finds in the history of this nation is there one more unaccountable than the career of Abraham Lincoln. How he first formed the habit, or where he adopted his method of mental concentration, has not been revealed. The ability to focus one’s whole mind on a single idea is not such an unattainable achievement. Perhaps it has no connection with genius in the true sense, but it serves to concentrate all the rays of mental light and power until they penetrate21 the hardest substances and ignite into explosion the latent power hitherto unguessed.
There seems to be no other great quality in Lincoln’s mentality22, but that one may account for all in him that was above the normal. He could manage flatboats, split rails, endure fatigue23, tell homely24 stories for illustration, and wait with unshakable patience, but his greatest achievement[Pg 32] was in the power he gained to think hard and long with his mind immovably concentrated upon a difficult problem.
That morning while I sat trembling by the door, the President read on with undisturbed attention the manuscript before him, occasionally making notes on the margin25 of the paper. He did not lift his eyes or move in his seat, and it was not until he had read carefully the last sentence, had scribbled26 his name or initials at the bottom of the last page, and had tied the paper carefully with a string, that he looked up at his visitor. Then a smile came over the worn face, and as he pulled himself into his spring-backed chair he called out, cheerfully:
“Come over to the table, young man. Glad to see you. But remember that I am a very busy man and have no time to spare; so tell me in the fewest words what it is you want.”
I took the seat at the table to which the President pointed27, pulled out a copy of[Pg 33] the record of the case, and read the soldier’s name. The President stopped me almost sharply, saying:
“Oh, you don’t need to read more about that case. Mr. Stanton and I talked over that report carefully last week!”
Already my nervousness had been dispelled28 as if by magic. Indeed, the President’s cordial, familiar manner and apparent good will gave me the courage to remark that it was “almost time for that order to be carried out.” For a moment Lincoln seemed to be offended by the hasty remark. Flinging himself back in his chair with an impatient gesture, he said:
“You can go down to the Ebbit House now and write to that soldier’s mother in Vermont and tell her the President told you that he never did sign an order to shoot a boy under twenty years of age and that he never will!”
As he uttered the last words of that remark he swung his long arms swiftly over his head and struck the table violently[Pg 34] with his fist. At that moment Lincoln’s boy, “Tad,” then eleven years old, slipped off a stool in the farther corner of the room, where he had been silently at play, and Lincoln turned anxiously around at the sound of his fall. Seeing that the little boy was unhurt, the President called:
“Come here, Tad, I wish to introduce you to this soldier!”
So quickly and easily had the purpose of my interview been accomplished29 that for a moment it left me dazed. But Lincoln wanted no thanks. What was done was done, and the incident was closed. The name of my young soldier friend was not mentioned again in the course of what turned out to be a long and wonderful chat about subjects as alien to discipline as music, education, and the cultivation30 and use of humor. The President had a purpose in detaining me, though at first I did not perceive what this was.
Without appearing in the least to see anything incongruous in the act—while a[Pg 35] score of important callers waited in the anteroom—Lincoln threw his long arm about the little boy and plunged31 into a conversation of the most personal sort. He told me it was his ambition to carry on a farm, with Tad for a partner. He said that he had bought a farm at New Salem, Illinois, where he used to dig potatoes at twenty-five cents a day, and that Tad and he were to have mule32 teams and raise corn and onions. Then he smiled as he remarked, “Mrs. Lincoln does not know anything about the plan for the onions.”
He said farming was, after all, the best occupation on earth. He then told a number of incidents in his own life to illustrate33, as he said, “How little I know about farming!” The incidents were droll34 and full of wise suggestions, which wholly disarmed35 me until I laughed without reserve.
Lincoln told of a visit Horace Greeley had made to the White House a few weeks before to enlighten the President on “What[Pg 36] I know about farming.” Lincoln said he half believed the story about Greeley wherein it was said that he (Greeley) planted a long row of beans, and when in the process of first growth the beans were pushed bodily out of the ground, Greeley concluded that the beans “had made a blunder,” and, pulling up each bean, he carefully turned it over with the roots sticking out in the air.
The President then asked me if I was a farmer’s boy, and when I answered that I was brought up on a farm in the Berkshire Hills he burst out into strong laughter and said, “I hear that you have to sharpen the noses of the sheep up there to get them down to the grass between the rocks.” Then the President, as his mind was led away from the awful cares of state, turned to a small side table and picked up a much-worn copy of the News Stand Edition of the Life and Sayings of Artemus Ward7. Both Ward and Lincoln were skilled storytellers, and they were alike in their avoidance[Pg 37] of vulgar or low yarns36. Lincoln was credited with thousands of yarns he never heard, and with thousands to which he would not have listened without giving a rebuke37. Many of those at which he revolted have been continued in print under his name. But Ward’s speech concerning his visit to the President among the office-seeking crowd was to Lincoln’s mind “a masterpiece of pure fun.”
As we sat there Lincoln opened Artemus Ward’s book and read several things from it. Then closing it, he said, “Ward rests me more than any living man.”
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1
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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ordeal
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| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
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footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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mustering
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| v.集合，召集，集结（尤指部队）( muster的现在分词 )；（自他人处）搜集某事物；聚集；激发 | |
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7
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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devastation
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| n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤 | |
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10
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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ranting
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| v.夸夸其谈( rant的现在分词 )；大叫大嚷地以…说教；气愤地)大叫大嚷；不停地大声抱怨 | |
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12
premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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18
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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prominence
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| n.突出；显著；杰出；重要 | |
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recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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21
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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mentality
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| n.心理，思想，脑力 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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scribbled
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| v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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27
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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28
dispelled
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| v.驱散，赶跑( dispel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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30
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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32
mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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33
illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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droll
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| adj.古怪的，好笑的 | |
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35
disarmed
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| v.裁军( disarm的过去式和过去分词 )；使息怒 | |
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36
yarns
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| n.纱( yarn的名词复数 )；纱线；奇闻漫谈；旅行轶事 | |
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rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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