"I've wandered to the village, Tom; I've sat beneath the tree
Upon the schoolhouse play-ground, that sheltered you and me:
But none were left to greet me, Tom, and few were left to know
Who played with us upon the green, some twenty years ago.
"Near by the spring, upon the elm you know I cut your name,—
Your sweetheart's just beneath it, Tom; and you did mine the same.
Some heartless wretch has peeled the bark,—'twas dying sure but slow,
Just as she died whose name you cut, some twenty years ago.
"My lids have long been dry, Tom, but tears came to my eyes;
I thought of her I loved so well, those early broken ties:
I visited the old churchyard, and took some flowers to strew
Upon the graves of these we loved, some twenty years ago."
This is the song Mr. Lincoln called for, and the one I sang to him in the vicinity of Antietam. He was at the time weary and sad. As I well knew it would, the song only deepened his sadness. I then did what I had done many times before: I startled him from his melancholy by striking up a comic air, singing also a snatch from "Picayune Butler," which broke the spell of "the little sad song," and restored somewhat his accustomed easy humor. It was not the first time I had pushed hilarity—simulated though it was—to an extreme for his sake. I had often recalled him from a pit of melancholy into which he was prone to descend, by a jest, a comic song, or a provoking sally of a startling kind; and Mr. Lincoln always thanked me afterward for my well-timed rudeness "of kind intent."
This reminds me of one or two little rhythmic shots I often fired at him in his melancholy moods, and it was a kind of nonsense that he always keenly relished. One was a parody on "Life on the Ocean Wave."
Mr. Lincoln would always laugh immoderately when I sang this jingling nonsense to him. It reminded him of the rude and often witty ballads that had amused him in his boyhood days. He was fond of negro melodies, and "The Blue-Tailed Fly" was a favorite. He often called for that buzzing ballad when we were alone, and he wanted to throw off the weight of public and private cares.
A comic song in the theatre always restored Mr. Lincoln's cheerful good-humor. But while he had a great fondness for witty and mirth-provoking ballads, our grand old patriotic airs and songs of the tender and sentimental kind afforded him the deepest pleasure. "Ben Bolt" was one of his favorite ballads; so was "The Sword of Bunker Hill;" and he was always deeply moved by "The Lament of the Irish Emigrant," especially the following touching lines:—
"I'm very lonely now, Mary,
For the poor make no new friends;
But, oh, they love the better still
The few our Father sends!
And you were all I had, Mary,
My blessing and my pride;
There's nothing left to care for now,
Since my poor Mary died."
Many examples can be given illustrative of this phase of Mr. Lincoln's character,—the blending of the mirthful and the melancholy in his singular love of music and verse. When he was seventeen years old, his sister was married. The festivities of the occasion were made memorable by a song entitled "Adam and Eve's Wedding Song," which many believed was composed by Mr. Lincoln himself. The conceits embodied in the verses were old before Mr. Lincoln was born; but there is some intrinsic as well as extrinsic evidence to show that the doggerel itself was his.
ADAM AND EVE'S WEDDING SONG.