Mr. Strong and Tom, with a few thousand other people, went to the reception at the White House on the afternoon of March fourth. President Lincoln was laboriously shaking hands with everybody in the long line. Almost every one of them seemed to be asking him for something. He was weary long before Tom and his father reached him, but his face brightened as he saw them. A boy always meant a great deal to Abraham Lincoln. "There may be so much in a boy," he used to say. He greeted the two warmly.
"Howdy, Strong? Glad to see you. This your boy? Howdy, sonny?"
Tom did not enjoy being called "sonny" much more than he had enjoyed being called "bub," but he was glad to have this big man with a woman's smile call him anything. He wrung the President's offered hand, stammered something shyly, and was passing on with his father, when Lincoln said:
"Hold on a minute, Strong. You haven't asked me for anything."
"I've nothing to ask for, Mr. President. I'm not here to beg for an office."
"Good gracious! You're the only man in Washington of that kind, I believe. Come to see me tomorrow morning, will you?"
"Most gladly, sir."
The impatient man behind them pushed them on. They heard him begin to plead: "Say, Abe, you know I carried Mattoon for you; I'd like to be Minister to England."
Boys and girls always appealed to the President's heart. When there were talks of vital import in his office, little Tad Lincoln often sat upon his father's knee. At a White House reception, Charles A. Dana once put his little girl in a corner, whence she saw the show. The father tells the story. When the reception was over, he said to Lincoln: "'I have a little girl here who wants to shake hands with you.' He went over to her and took her up and kissed her and talked to her. She will never forget it if she lives to be a thousand years old."