He was tired, pale, almost worn out. The ceaseless grind of work, the frightful and increasing responsibilities imposed by the war, the cruel jibes of critics all over the country, had deepened the furrows in his brow and wasted his homely face. Every mail brought threats of assassination. The far-away, rapt look in his eyes, the pitiful droop of his strong mouth, the pathetic sloping of his tall, black-clad figure, gave evidence of the strain upon him.
“Gentlemen,” he said, with a smile that lit up his wonderful face, “suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin [the famous tight-rope walker] to carry across the Niagara River on a rope. Would you shake the cable, or keep shouting at him, ‘Blondin, stand up a little straighter—Blondin, stoop a little more—go a little faster—lean a little more to the north—lean a little more to the south’? No, you would hold your breath, as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government’s carrying an enormous weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the best they can. Don’t badger them. Keep silence, and we will get you safe across.”
Lincoln did not fight battles himself, but he searched patiently for generals who could, and then he trusted them, and kept the public off their backs. As he said to General Grant, “If a man can’t skin, he must hold a leg while somebody else does.”
Imagine Lincoln, in his black frock coat and high hat, stealing out of the White House in the morning to kneel in the grass on the Mall and practice at a sheet of note paper with newly-invented rifles till the indignant sentries dash up shouting, to see the long figure unfold itself upward and recognize in the disturber the President of the United States!
Imagine him playing with his children on the White House lawn, “his coat-tails standing out straight and his black hair tousled this way and that” as he dashes about, chased by his shrieking playmates!
Imagine him again and again asking little girls to kiss him, snatching them to his thin breast, fondling them with tears in his eyes!
Imagine him watching through weary nights by his son’s deathbed, standing stricken beside the little coffin, and then, for the first time, turning to the Bible for consolation!
Imagine him entertaining his log-cabin cousin, Dennis Hanks, in the White House, and, when that simple soul disapproves of Secretary Stanton’s arrogance and urges him to “kick the frisky little Yankee out,” patiently answering, “It would be difficult to find another man to fill his place”!
Imagine him sitting in his nightshirt on the edge of young John Hay’s bed, night after night, reading doggerel verses from the newspapers, cracking jokes or reciting from Shakespeare!
Imagine him signing a pardon for a young soldier sentenced to be shot and hearing the sobs of that mother waiting outside, “Thank God! Thank Lincoln! Pardoned! Oh, my boy! my boy!”