“A throng was assembled on the dock and a greater throng was in the street outside the gates. During the tedious process of working the ship into her dock there was a great crush in that part of the vessel where the gang plank was to be swung. Among the passengers who were here gathered was an aged lady. She was dressed plainly and almost commonly. There was a bad rent in her ample cloak. Her face was furrowed, and her hair was streaked with white. This was the widow of Abraham Lincoln. She was almost unnoticed. She had come alone across the ocean, but a nephew met her at Quarantine. She has spent the last four years in the south of France. When the gang plank was finally swung aboard, Mlle. Bernhardt and her companions, including Mme. Columbier of the troupe, were the first to descend. The fellow-voyagers of the actress pressed about her to bid adieu, and a cheer was raised, which turned her head and provoked an astonished smile, as she stepped upon the wharf. The gates were besieged, and there was some difficulty in bringing in the carriage which was to convey the actress to her hotel. She temporarily waited in the freight office at the entrance to the wharf. Mrs. Lincoln, leaning on the arm of her nephew, walked toward the gate. A policeman touched the aged lady on the shoulder and bade her stand back. She retreated with her nephew into the line of spectators, while Manager Abbey’s carriage was slowly brought in. The Bernhardt was handed inside, and the carriage made its way out through a mass of struggling ’longshoremen and idlers who pressed about it and stared in at the open windows. After it, went out the others who had been passengers on the Amerique, Mrs. Lincoln among the rest.”

Mrs. Lincoln went at once to Springfield, where her sister resided, and took up her abode with her, leading thenceforth a quiet and retired life. Her only son Robert was appointed Secretary of War by President Garfield. Some years previous to that event he had married the daughter of ex-Senator Harlan, and has a family of children growing up about him.

XXII.
ELIZA McCARDLE JOHNSON.

In the autumn of 1824, the term of a fatherless boy’s apprenticeship expired, and he entered the world rich only in energy, and a noble ambition to provide for a widowed mother. But he was sensitive and anxious to enlarge his facilities for an education, and his strong mind grasped and analyzed the fact that to succeed he must form new ties, and find a broader field of action. Tennessee was the land of promise which attracted his attention, and accompanied by his mother, who justly deserved the affection he bestowed upon her, he reached Greenville in 1826.

Young, aspiring, and ambitious, he was not long in making friends, and among them a beautiful girl evinced her appreciation of his character, by becoming his wife. Eliza McCardle was the only daughter of a widow, whose father had been dead many years, and whose life had been spent in her mountain home. When she was married, she had just reached her seventeenth year, and her husband was not yet twenty-one.

Education in those days did not comprehend and embrace the scientific accomplishments it does now, but a naturally gifted mind, endowed with much common sense, received a broad basis for future development. She was well versed in the usual branches of instruction, and possessed, in an extraordinary degree, that beauty of face and form which rendered her mother one of the most beautiful of women.

Mrs. ANDREW JOHNSON.

It is a mistaken idea that she taught her husband his letters; for in the dim shadows of the workshop at Raleigh, after the toil of the day was complete, he had mastered the alphabet and made himself generally acquainted with the construction of words and sentences. The incentive to acquire mental attainment was certainly enhanced when he felt the superiority of her acquirements, and from that time his heroic nature began to discover itself. In the silent watches of the night, while sleep rested upon the village, the youthful couple studied together; she ofttimes reading as he completed the weary task before him, oftener still bending over him to guide his hand in writing.

He never had the benefit of one day’s school routine in his life, yet he acquired by perseverance the benefits denied by poverty. What a contemplation it must have been to those mothers who watched over their children as they struggled together! Let time in its flight transport us back to those years, and see what a scene was being then enacted there. In that obscure village in the mountains, three strong, yet tender-hearted women watched over and cherished the budding genius of the future statesman. History, in preserving its record of the life and services of the seventeenth President of the United States, rears to them a noble tribute of their faithfulness.