“Well, I kept hearin’ about the trouble he was havin’ with everybody, and I just made up my mind I’d go down and see him and swap yarns and tell him how we was all countin’ on his gettin’ home. Thought maybe it would cheer him up to know we set such store on his comin’ home if they didn’t want him for president. So I jest picked up and went right off. Ma was real good about my goin’. She says, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if ’twould do him good, William. And don’t you ask him no questions about the war nor about politics. You just talk home to him and tell him some of them foolish stories of yourn.’
“Well, I had a brother in Washington, clerk in a department—awful set up ’cause he had an office—and when I got down there I told him I’d come to visit Mr. Lincoln. He says, ‘William, be you a fool? Folks don’t visit the President of the United States without an invitation, and he’s too busy to see anybody but the very biggest people in this administration. Why, he don’t even see me,’ he says. Well, it made me huffy to hear him talk. ‘Isaac,’ I says, ‘I don’t wonder Mr. Lincoln don’t see you. But it’s different with me. Him and me is friends.’
“‘Well’ he says, ‘you’ve got to have cards anyway.’ ‘Cards,’ I says, ‘what for? What kind?’ ‘Why,’ he says, ‘visitin’ cards—with your name on.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘it’s come to a pretty pass, if an old friend like me can’t see Mr. Lincoln without sendin’ him a piece of pasteboard. I’d be ashamed to do such a thing, Isaac Brown. Do you suppose he’s forgotten me? Needs to see my name printed out to know who I am? You can’t make me believe any such thing,’ and I walked right out of the room, and that night I footed it up to the Soldiers’ Home where Mr. Lincoln was livin’ then, right among the sick soldiers in their tents.
“There was lots of people settin’ around in a little room, waitin’ fer him, but there wan’t anybody there I knowed, and I was feelin’ a little funny when a door opened and out came little John Nicolay. He came from down this way, so I just went up and says, ‘How’d you do, John; where’s Mr. Lincoln?’ Well, John didn’t seem over glad to see me.
“‘Have you an appintment with Mr. Lincoln?’ he says.
“‘No, sir,’ I says; ‘I ain’t, and it ain’t necessary. Mebbe it’s all right and fittin’ for them as wants post-offices to have appintments, but I reckon Mr. Lincoln’s old friends don’t need ’em, so you just trot along, Johnnie, and tell him Billy Brown’s here and see what he says.’ Well, he kind a flushed up and set his lips together, but he knowed me, and so he went off. In about two minutes the door popped open and out came Mr. Lincoln, his face all lit up. He saw me first thing, and he laid holt of me and just shook my hands fit to kill. ‘Billy,’ he says, ‘now I am glad to see you. Come right in. You’re goin’ to stay to supper with Mary and me.’
“Didn’t I know it? Think bein’ president would change him—not a mite. Well, he had a right smart lot of people to see, but soon as he was through [we went out on the back stoop and set down and talked and talked]. He asked me about pretty nigh everybody in Springfield. I just let loose and told him about the weddin’s and births and the funerals and the buildin’, and I guess there wan’t a yarn I’d heard in the three years and a half he’d been away that I didn’t spin for him. Laugh—you ought to a heard him laugh—just did my heart good, for I could see what they’d been doin’ to him. Always was a thin man, but, Lordy, he was thinner’n ever now, and his face was kind a drawn and gray—enough to make you cry.
[“We went out on the back stoop and sat down and talked and talked”]