“We were obliged to wait some time in the anteroom before we could be received; and, when at length the door was opened to us, a small lad, perhaps ten or twelve years old, who had been waiting for admission several days without success, slipped in between us, and approached the President in advance.
“The latter gave the Senator and myself a cordial but brief salutation, and turning immediately to the lad, said, ‘And who is the little boy?’
“During their conference the Senator and myself were apparently forgotten. The boy soon told his story, which was in substance that he had come to Washington seeking employment as a page in the House of Representatives, and he wished the President to give him such an appointment. To this the President replied that such appointments were not at his disposal, and that application must be made to the door-keeper of the House at the Capitol.
“ ‘But, sir,’ said the lad, still undaunted, ‘I am a good boy, and have a letter from my mother, and one from the supervisors of my town, and one from my Sunday-school teacher; they all told me that I could earn enough in one session of Congress to keep my mother and the rest of us comfortable all the remainder of the year.’
“The President took the lad’s papers and ran his eye over them with that penetrating and absorbent look so familiar to all who knew him, and then took his pen and wrote upon the back of one of them. ‘If Capt. Goodnow can give a place to
this good little boy, I shall be gratified,’ and signed it ‘A. Lincoln.’
“The boy’s face became radiant with hope, and he walked out of the room with a step as light as though all the angels were whispering their congratulations.
“Only after the lad had gone did the President seem to realize that a Senator and another person had been for some time waiting to see him.
“Think for a moment of the President of a great nation, and that nation engaged in one of the most terrible wars waged against men, himself worn down with anxiety and labor, subjected to the alternations of success and defeat, racked by complaints of the envious, the disloyal, and the unreasonable, pressed to the decision of grave questions of public policy, and encumbered by the numberless and nameless incidents of civil and martial responsibility, yet able so far to forget them all as to give himself up for the time being to the errand of a little boy, who had braved an interview uninvited, and of whom he knew nothing, but that he had a story to tell of his mother and of his ambition to serve her.”