“He then commenced pacing the floor again. Suddenly he wheeled, the current of his thought having changed, and said:
“‘Oh, Moody, I don’t want you to think I have become a religious man because I asked you to pray. I am sorry to say it, I am not, and never pretended to be religious. No one knows this better than you, but, Moody, there is one thing about it, I do believe in Almighty God, and I believe also in the Bible, and I say, d—n me if Nashville shall be surrendered!’
“And Nashville was not surrendered!”
HE COULDN’T WAIT FOR THE COLONEL.
General Fisk, attending a reception at the White House, saw waiting in the ante-room a poor old man from Tennessee, and learned that he had been waiting three or four days to get an audience, on which probably depended the life of his son, under sentence of death for some military offense.
General Fisk wrote his case in outline on a card and sent it in, with a special request that the President would see the man. In a moment the order came; and past impatient senators, governors and generals, the old man went.
He showed his papers to Mr. Lincoln, who said he would look into the case and give him the result next day.
The old man, in an agony of apprehension, looked up into the President’s sympathetic face and actually cried out:
“To-morrow may be too late! My son is under sentence of death! It ought to be decided now!”