Secretary Seward was very much amused.
The President turned to him as if much perplexed.
“Seward,” he said, “advise with me. This case requires great diplomacy.”
Mr. Seward patted Tad on the head and said, “My boy, be careful that you don’t run the government into debt.”
Then Lincoln took his little boy’s hand in his, saying, “Tell Peter that you really have to obey the Bible which tells you to feed the hungry, and that he ought to be a better Christian.”
Tad went to Peter with the astonishing news that his father didn’t believe the White House cook was a Christian.
The religious problem of “feeding the hungry” won quickly over the economic problem of White House expenses. Childhood was not defeated in its sympathies, and, like every other moral question, it was solved in the spirit of social democracy.
Secretary Seward writes of this that in less than an hour they passed back through the yard on their way to a Cabinet meeting and about a dozen small boys were sitting on the kitchen steps having a state dinner at the expense of the government.