LINCOLN ON APRIL 23, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9154, 8 September 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

LINCOLN ON APRIL 23, 1888.

The following touching incident is told for the first time in the Century's Lincoln history, April instalment : —" Lincoln, by nature and habit so calm, so equable, so undemonstrative, nevertheless passed this period of interrupted communication and isolation from the North in a state of nervous tension, which put all his great powers of mental and physical endurance to their severest trial. General Scott's reports, though invariably expressing his confidence in successful defence, frankly admitted the evident danger; and the President, with his acuteness of observation, and his rapidity and correctness of inference, lost no single one of the external indications of doubt and apprehension. Day after day prediction failed, and hope was deferred ; troops did not come, ships did not arrive, railroads remained broken, messengers failed to reach their destination. The fact itself demonstrated that he was environed by the unknown—and that whether a Union or a Secession army would first reach the capital was at best an uncertainty. To a coarse or vulgar nature such a situation would have brought only one or two feelings—either overpowering personal fear or overweening bravado. But Lincoln, almost a giant in physical stature and strength, combined in his intellectual nature a masculine courage and power of logic with a sentimental tenderness jis delicate as a woman's, and an ideal sensitiveness of conscience. Tho presidential trust which lie had assumed was to him not a mere regalia of rank and honour. Its terrible duties and responsibilities seemed rather a coat of steel armour not only heavy to bear, but cutting remorselessly into the quick flesh. That- one of the successors of Washington should find himself even to this degree in the hands of his enemies was personally humiliating; but that the majesty of a great nation should be thus insulted, and its visible symbols of authority placed in jeopardy ; above all, that the hitherto glorious example of the republic to other nations should stand in this peril of surprise and possible, sudden collapse, the Constitution be scoffed and jeered, and human freedom become once more a by-word and reproach—this must have begot in him an anxiety approaching torture. In the eyes of his countrymen and of the world he was holding the scales of national destiny ; he alone knew that for the moment the forces which made the beam vibrate with such uncertainty were beyond his control. In others' society he gave no sign of these inner emotions. But once, on the afternoon of tho '23rd, the business of the day being over, the Executive office deserted, after walking the floor alone in silent thought for nearly half an hour, lie stopped and gazed long and wistfully out of the window -.. n the Potomac in the direction of the expe-' d ships ; and, unconscious of any presence in the room, at length broke out, with irrepressible anguish, in the repeated >xc' mation, ' Why don't they come! Why don't they corn© !'"