Ten Boys from History

by Kate Dickinson Sweetser

In another historic scene we find him figuring. It was the night of President Lincoln's last long speech, that of April 11, 1865. News had just come of the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, and the White House was a blaze of lights from attic to cellar, in honour of the occasion, while all over the country a wave of joy swept, for now it was felt that the end of the long struggle was in sight. A great crowd of people had gathered outside the White House and the sound of their cheers and shouts was like the roar of the ocean, and the clamour of brass bands and the explosion of fireworks, added to the general confusion and noise.

Inside the White House, the President and some friends sat long at dinner, after which the President would be expected to make a speech to the expectant crowd, but he lingered at the table, as though loath to end its pleasant intercourse, while Tad grew impatient at such a long period of inaction, and crept away. Soon he was discovered at a front window, out of which he was frantically waving a Confederate flag, which someone had given him. The impatient crowd outside, eagerly watching for something to happen, when they saw the little figure with the big rebel flag, applauded uproariously, for Tad and his pranks were one of the features of the White House. But when the dignified old family butler discovered the youngster he was horrified. After a long struggle with him which delighted the crowd, Tad was captured and dragged in, and his flag confiscated while the old servant exclaimed:

"Oh, Master Tad, the likes of it, the likes of a rebel flag out of the windows of the White House.—Oh, did I ever!"

Struggling out of his conqueror's clutches, Tad rushed tempestuously to his father to complain about such treatment, but Mr. Lincoln, having finished dinner, had just stepped into a centre window, from which he could look out on the great crowd of people below him, and was waiting for the mighty cheer that welcomed him to die away. Then he spoke, and as the first words:

"We meet to-night, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart,"—fell on the ears of the throng, a mighty hush enveloped the surging mass of human beings whom he was addressing.

His speech was written on loose sheets of paper, which as he finished, fluttered one by one from his hand to the ground. The candle which should have given him light, was not where he could see to read by it, so he took it from its place, and held it in one hand, while he continued with his reading, and still the pages fluttered to the ground one by one.

Tad, meanwhile, finding his father occupied, had seized the chance of despoiling the forsaken dinner table of all the dainties still on it, but after this diversion began to pall, he looked about for some new excitement. Hearing the President's voice addressing the crowd, Tad crept behind his father, and amused himself by picking up the fluttering pages as they fell. The President was reading slowly and the pages dropped too seldom to suit impatient Tad.

"Come, give me another!" he whispered loudly, pulling the leg of his father's trousers. The President made a little motion of his foot towards Tad, but gave no other sign that he heard the whispered command, and continued to voice his grave and wise thoughts on Reconstruction.

Below was that vast sea of upturned faces—every eye fixed on the face of the much loved President. At the window, his face radiant with patriotic joy stood Abraham Lincoln—that heroic figure, reading the speech which was to be his last word to the people.

Beside him, creeping back and forth on his hands and knees after the fluttering pages, and sometimes lifting an eager face to his father, was Tad, the boy of the White House, and there let us leave him, close beside that father to whom he was both comfort and joy, through dark years of storm and stress. Let us leave Abraham Lincoln, and Tad, his cherished son, together there in the sight of the people to whom they were so dear, before the black curtain of sorrow falls over them, that Tad's merry face may linger in our memory untouched by the sorrow of a nation's tragedy.