"And darkness and doubt are now flying away;
No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn:
So breaks on the traveler, faint and astray,
The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn.
See truth, love, and mercy, in triumph descending,
And Nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom!
On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are blending,
And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb."
Mrs. Lincoln used to listen to such recitations as this from the English Readers and Kentucky Orators with delight and wonder. She loved the boy with all her heart. In all the biographies of Lincoln there is hardly a more pathetic incident than one told by Mr. Herndon of his visit to Mrs. Lincoln after the assassination and the national funeral. Mr. Herndon was the law partner of Lincoln for many years, and we give the incident here, out of place as it is. Mrs. Lincoln said to her step-son's friend:
"Abe was a poor boy, and I can say what scarcely one woman—a mother—can say, in a thousand: Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life.... His mind and my mind—what little I had—seemed to run together.... He was here after he was elected President." Here she stopped, unable to proceed any further, and after her grateful emotions had spent themselves in tears, she proceeded: "He was dutiful to me always. I think he loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys; but I must say, both being now dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or ever expect to see. I wish I had died when my husband died. I did not want Abe to run for President, did not want him elected; was afraid, somehow—felt it in my heart; and when he came down to see me, after he was elected President, I felt that something would befall him, and that I should see him no more."
Equally beautiful was the scene when Lincoln visited this good woman for the last time, just before going to Washington to be inaugurated President.
"Abraham," she said, as she stood in her humble backwoods cabin, "something tells me that I shall never see you again."
He put his hand around her neck, lifted her face to heaven and said, "Mother!"