Executive Mansion
October 15, 1864
Hamlet’s thoughts, his moods, fit the conflict that assails our country.
...We defy augury; there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all; since no man has aught of what he leaves what is it to leave betimes? Let be.
Let be. Do we?
Little Tad heard Mary speaking about Maitland’s shotgun death; he climbed onto Mary’s bed and talked about our friend’s funeral—tearful details about the White House ceremony, details bitter for childish emphasis.
Perhaps it is repugnant to write here when men are dying. Perhaps my diary should not have been written; perhaps I should have been attending the wounded in the hospitals. But that confusion, that confusion of pain and sorrow, would not, could not, carry me forward.
Executive Mansion
October 21st, ’64