way the case was presented struck Lincoln as very funny. His
visitor had no humor. He failed to see jokes while Lincoln quizzed him
as to who and what was Betsy Ann. At length the President wrote a line
on a card and handed it to the great man. "Tell Betsy Ann to put a
string in this card and hang it round her neck," said he. "When the
officers (who may have doubted her affiliations) see this they will keep
their hands off your Betsy Ann." On the card was written, "Let Betsy Ann
Dougherty alone as long as she behaves herself. A. Lincoln."(15)

This eagerness for a joke now and then gave offense. On one occasion,
a noted Congressman called on the President shortly after a disaster.
Lincoln began to tell a story. The Congressman jumped up. "Mr.
President, I did not come here this morning to hear stories. It is too
serious a time." Lincoln's face changed. "Ashley," said he, "sit down! I
respect you as an earnest, sincere man. You can not be more anxious than
I have been constantly since the beginning of the war; and I say to you
now, that were it not for this occasional vent, I should die."(16) Again
he said, "When the Peninsula Campaign terminated suddenly at Harrison's
Landing, I was as near inconsolable as I could be and live."(17)

Lincoln's imaginative power, the ineradicable artist in him, made
of things unseen true realities to his sensibility. Reports of army
suffering bowed his spirit. "This was especially' the case when the
noble victims were of his own acquaintance, or of the narrower circle of
his familiar friends; and then he seemed for the moment possessed of a
sense of personal responsibility for their individual fate which was at
once most unreasonable and most pitiful." On hearing that two sons of an
old friend were desperately wounded and would probably die, he broke out
with: "Here, now, are these dear brave boys killed in this cursed war.
My God! My God! It is too bad! They worked hard to earn money to
educate themselves and this is the end! I loved them as if they were my
own."(18) He was one of the few who have ever written a beautiful letter
of condolence. Several of his letters attempting this all but impossible
task, come as near their mark as such things can. One has become a
classic:

"I have been shown," he wrote to Mrs. Bixby, "in the files of the War
Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that
you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field
of b