ghosts of his father and brother. This dream-faith of his was as
real as was a similar faith held by the authors of the Old Testament.
He had his theory of the interpretation of dreams. Because they were
a universal experience--as he believed, the universal mode of
communication between the unseen and the seen--his beloved "plain
people," the "children of Nature," the most universal types of humanity,
were their best interpreters. He also believed in presentiment. As
faithfully as the simplest of the brood of the forest--those recreated
primitives who regulated their farming by the brightness or the
darkness of the moon, who planted corn or slaughtered hogs as Artemis
directed--he trusted a presentiment if once it really took possession of
him. A presentiment which had been formed before this time, we know not
when, was clothed with authority by a dream, or rather a vision, that
came to him in the days of melancholy disillusion during the last winter
at Springfield. Looking into a mirror, he saw two Lincolns,--one alive,
the other dead. It was this vision which clenched his pre-sentiment that
he was born to a great career and to a tragic end. He interpreted the
vision that his administration would be successful, but that it would
close with his death.(7)

The record of his inner life during the last winter at Springfield is
very dim. But there can be no doubt that a desolating change attacked
his spirit. As late as the day of his ultimatum he was still in
comparative sunshine, or, at least his clouds were not close about him.
His will was steel, that day. Nevertheless, a friend who visited him
in January, to talk over their days together, found not only that "the
old-time zest" was lacking, but that it was replaced by "gloom and
despondency."(8) The ghosts that hovered so frequently at the back of
his mind, the brooding tendencies which fed upon his melancholy and
made him at times irresolute, were issuing from the shadows, trooping
forward, to encompass him roundabout.

In the midst of this spiritual reaction, he was further depressed by the
stern news from the South and from Washington. His refusal to compromise
was beginning to bear fruit. The Gulf States seceded. A Southern
Confederacy was formed. There is no evidence that he lost faith in
his course, but abundant evidence that he was terribly unhappy. He was
preyed upon by his sense of helplessness, while Buchanan through his
weakness and vacillation was "giving a