Soon after this occupation the victor heard the name of Pickett announced to him. The Southern general, George Pickett, was a protégé of his, as he smoothed his entry upon the West Point Military Academy book when he was a congressman. Without either knowing it, the hero was lying dead on a hard-fought field close by. But Lincoln ordered her admittance. She was accompanied by her little son. This alone would have prevailed over the President, but, as she formally addressed him as the authority, he interrupted:
"Not the President, but George's old friend!"
And beckoning the wondering boy to him with the irresistible attraction of men who love the young, and are intuitively loved by them, he said:
"Tell your father, rascal, that I forgive him for the sake of your mother's smile, and your own bright eyes."
This reconciliation on the fall of the sword was a token of the forgivingness of the North toward the chastened foes.
"CLOSE YOUR EYES!"
The Marquis of Chambrun, a French volunteer, who entered the Lincoln circle, relates in a more elegant strain the above incident. He states that Thompson and Sanders were informed upon, and Stanton repeated the information to the President with a view of having them intercepted. But the other in his tender voice responded:
"Let us close our eyes, and leave them pass unnoticed."
DON'T JUDGE BY APPEARANCES.
The President's recklessness seems incredible as to going about the capital, as far as he knew and wished, without escort, but his "browsing," to use his word, about the perilous front while the concluding actions were enveloping Petersburg preliminarily to the rush at Richmond, partake of the nature of a fanatic's daring. This is the support to the otherwise taxing story told by Doctor J. E. Burriss, of New York, then a volunteer soldier at the place. He states that Lincoln, so shabbily dressed as to be taken for a farmer or planter, was so treated by soldiery before a tobacco-warehouse under guard. They wanted tobacco, and begged him to allow some to be turned out. He approached a young lieutenant commanding the post, but the latter was insolent to the "old Southerner." The latter sent a soldier to General Grant, who himself rode up, post-haste, at the summons. The soldiers were given some of the Indian weed, and the donor, turning to the impertinent officer, who had thought him a converted reb, said: