And as I was starting to scuttle up the main stairway, what should I do but run into a party of folks that was coming down from the wards. Some of the doctors and officers were with them.
And I pretty near collided, bang slap, with the gentleman who was coming down the stairs a step or two in front of the rest.
I stopped and said: “Excuse me, sir. I wasn’t looking.” And then I did look.
I looked up to where I thought his face would just naturally be. And I’m blest if it wasn’t only his chest instead. I kept looking up—up—up—till my neck near got a crick in it.
And at last I saw his face.
He looked about nine feet, thirteen inches high, and as thin as a rail. And his black clothes and his high pot-hat made him look a lot higher and thinner. But it wasn’t his figure I found I was gawping at. It was his face.
Oh, Jim, such a face! Ugly, I suppose, and whiskered, and full of gullies and ridges.
But it’s the strongest, wisest, kindest, wonderfulest face the Lord ever made. And the great big gray eyes looked as if they were holding the work and the bothers and the sorrows—and the fun, too—of the whole eternal universe.
Yes, you’ve guessed who it was. Mr. Lincoln. No less.
I just stood there, all flabbergasted; staring and courtsying. And he kept looking down at me with the sweetest, friendliest smile you ever saw.