WHY DUMMY CLOCKS MARK 8:18
THERE are few who have not seen the ordinary sign of a jeweler, an immense imitation of a watch hanging over the front of the store. But it is safe to say that the number who have ever detected anything curious in these same signs is small. At 8:18 p. m., April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theatre at Washington by John Wilkes Booth. Since that fatal night every one of these watch-signs that has gone from the factory of the only man who makes them has shown the hour of 8:18. The man who makes them said: "I was working on a sign for Jeweler Adams, who kept a store on Broadway across the street from Stewart's. He came running in while I was at work and told me the news. 'Paint those hands at the hour Lincoln was shot, that the deed may never be forgotten,' he said. I did so. Since then every watch-sign that has gone out of here has been lettered the same as that one."
—Journal of Education
LINCOLN'S TENDERNESS
WHEN Lincoln was on his way to the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, an old gentleman told him that his only son fell on Little Round Top at Gettysburg and he was going to look at the spot.
Mr. Lincoln replied: "You have been called on to make a terrible sacrifice for the Union, and a visit to that spot, I fear, will open your wounds afresh.
"But, oh, my dear sir, if we had reached the end of such sacrifices, and had nothing left for us to do but to place garlands on the graves of those who have already fallen, we could give thanks even amidst our tears; but when I think of the sacrifices of life yet to be offered, and the hearts and homes yet to be made desolate before this dreadful war is over, my heart is like lead within me, and I feel at times like hiding in deep darkness."