LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 56-10108
Printed in the United States of America
1
The package was very tightly sealed.
There was a heavy cord around it fastened with thick blobs of wax and Tad Lincoln, who had been christened Thomas, stood fidgeting while his father worked at it patiently, with the old horn-handled knife that opened and shut with a sharp click.
Outside was the gloom of late December. That December of 1863, when the fortunes of the Federal armies had taken a little swing upward, but when war still lay like a poisonous, tragic, and heartbreaking shadow over a whole country. But to Tad Lincoln December meant Christmas, and packages meant surprises, important to a ten-year-old boy.
Tad stood first on one foot, then the other, impatiently, because Papa was so slow in opening this package. A round-faced boy, with his mother’s brown eyes and hair, he was a sturdy figure in the miniature uniform of a Union colonel that his father had had made for him. The coat fitted him jauntily, all the brass buttons fastened up in regulation fashion; there were epaulets and braid and long trousers lying properly over his toes, so that the copper toes of his boots showed. He had a belt and a sword, but he was not wearing them now. Swords were for engagements, reviews, and parades, the officers of Company K had instructed him. Among friends indoors an officer took off his belt and hung it in a safe place.
His father’s fingers were mighty long and bony, Tad was thinking, and awkward, too. One thumbnail was thicker and darker than the other nails and Tad touched it gently with his forefinger.
“What makes your thumb like that, Papa?” he asked.
The long yellowed hand put down the knife and the deep-set, steel-gray eyes of Abraham Lincoln studied the thumb intently as though he had never seen it before.