"That night when this lonesome boy was leaning on the gate still brooding over his disappointment but obediently trying to memorize the Rule in Shelley's Case a tall man, for whom he was waiting, came up the street and asked, 'What is the matter? Holes in your pocket and your marbles and knife all dropped out?' 'Yes,' said the boy, 'I have lost my knife and my marbles and there are big holes in my pockets.' 'Well,' replied the man, 'you must have strong pockets like mine. I have marbles and a knife but my pockets are so strong now that they do not make holes in them, as they used to do. Come, sit down on the grass and let's have a game of mumble-de-peg.' The man played so badly on purpose that it was he who had to mumble the peg, but his playmate insisted that he should mumble it. 'No, you have been mumbling the peg all day, my boy. I want to keep you from mumbling pegs.'
"The next morning the boy was awakened by a handful of gravel thrown against the window. He looked out and saw his friend with saddle-bags in his hand. 'Going up the road a piece,' he called out. It took the man a long time to go up the road and the boy waited for him week after week to come down the road. After a long time there came instead a letter from which the following is an extract:
I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is, truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are. Notwithstanding this copy-book preamble, my boy, I am inclined to suggest a little prudence on your part. You see I have a congenital aversion to failure, and the sudden announcement to your Uncle Andrew of the success of your "lamp-rubbing" might possibly prevent your passing the severe physical examination to which you will be subjected in order to enter the Military Academy. I should like to have a perfect soldier credited to dear old Illinois—no broken bones, scalp wounds, etc. So I think perhaps it might be wise to hand this letter from me in to your good uncle through his room-window after he has had a comfortable dinner, and watch its effect from the top of the pigeon-house.
"Inclosed in this letter was one from Mr. John G. Stuart, Representative in Congress of the Third Illinois District, together with an appointment to West Point."
My Soldier was silent for a moment, then continued:
"That man is the one we have just heard maligned; the man to whom I, your Soldier, owes his profession, the one to whom he is indebted for the garlands that were hung around his horse all along the road as he came from Gettysburg, the one whose honesty and courage enabled your Soldier to defy the British fleet at San Juan, and to whom he owes the gratitude of the people of Petersburg who say that he saved their town—that man was Abraham Lincoln."
Months afterward, when the awful news of Lincoln's death came to us, my Soldier exclaimed:
"My God! My God! The South has lost her best friend and protector in this, her direst hour of need!"