Xv.
Those who knew and loved Mr. Lincoln as many of us did, were more disposed to sympathize with him in the deep sadness which weighed down his spirit, than to criticise his occasional facetious remarks, in which, on his account chiefly, we were so glad to hear him indulge [475] The following extracts from our first hundred years, page 596, may illustrate the subject:The Dark in the White House.—Feb. 22, 1862.—‘Willie Lincoln is dead!’ Everybody in Washington knew Willie; and everybody was sad. Sad,—for it seemed hard for the lovely boy to be taken away so early, while the sun was just gilding the mountain up which he was pressing, and from which he could look down the sweet valley, and see so far into the future! Sad for her who held him as one of the jewels of her home-coronet; dearer than all the insignia of this world's rank. That coronet was broken, now. Its fragments might dazzle, and grace still; but it could never be the same coronet again. Sad for the master of the Executive Mansion, for there was weight enough pressing on that tired brain,—sorrow enough in that great heart. With the burden of a mighty republic on his shoulders—a republic betrayed, and wounded in the house of its friends—a republic that had cost so much and become so dear to its own true children, and in whose prosperity the hopes of all men who waited for the consolation of the nations, were bound up—a republic for whose safety and triumph, God, angels, and all good men would forever hold him responsible, and disaster clouding almost every battle-field—it seemed to us for a moment, when we heard the news of the boy's death, that even heaven's own ‘sweet fountain’ of pity had dried up.It was a wild winter night, but I wished to see again how far the process of Willie's embalmment had gone, and as Dr. B——was to make one more visit that night, I took his arm at a late hour, and we walked up together. The wind howled desolately; angry gusts struck us at every corner: tempest-clouds were careering high up in the heavens: and the dead leaves of last year, as they flew cuttingly against our cheeks, seemed to have come out of their still graves to ‘join in the dreadful revelry’ of the death of the Republic of Washington, on the very anniversary of his birth—for it was on the eve of the 22d of February, the night in which he was born.
‘Is it not among the strangest of things that this event should have happened?’ ‘No, doctor: I do not so regard it; still stranger events than this have taken place in the White House. It has been no more exempt from trouble, than the other dwellings of America. Poor General Harrison entered it, as a Prince goes to his palace to rule a great people; in one month he was borne from it, to his grave. General Taylor, fresh from the fields of his fame as a patriot warrior, came here [476] only to pass a few months of troubled life, and then surrender to the only enemy he ever yielded to. Fillmore, who also was summoned here by the act of God, after acquitting himself most manfully and honorably of all his duties, had scarcely vacated the mansion, before he was called to entomb the wife of his youth and the mother of his children, of whom the fair one he loved best, soon after went to the same repose. He descended from his high place to become the chief mourner; and his ovation was a funeral at Buffalo. So, too, with his successor, who left the new-made grave of his only son in Concord, killed in an instant, to be inaugurated at the Capitol, and enter as a mourner, this stately mansion’
‘Yes, gentlemen,’ said Edward, the chief door-keeper, ‘it is all still in the house now.’ We entered the Green Room; Willie lay in his coffin. The lid was off. He was clothed in his soldier's dress. He had been embalmed by the process of Susquet, of Paris, and thus Willie Wallace Lincoln's body was prepared for its final resting-place in the home of his happy childhood. One more look at the calm face, which still wore its wonted expression of hope and cheerfulness, and we left him to his repose.
In the meantime, a measured footfall had come faintly from the East Room, and the tall form of the chief mourner was passing into the sacred place. ‘Is it all well?—All my thanks.’ Leaving the stricken President in the solemn silence of the deep night, alone with his boy, we passed out of the mansion. The coming storm was clouding the heavens with a deep mourning, and its heavy sighings wrapped the Home of the Presidents in sadness and gloom. ‘God heal the broken hearts left there,’ was our only prayer.
