rk to me.

"Very simple to understand. Mr. Lincoln is so generous that he will not
save anything from his salary, and I expect that we will leave the White
House poorer than when we came into it; and should such be the case, I
will have no further need for an expensive wardrobe, and it will be
policy to sell it off."

I thought at the time that Mrs. Lincoln was borrowing trouble from the
future, and little dreamed that the event which she so dimly
foreshadowed would ever come to pass.

I closed my business about the 10th of September, and made every
arrangement to leave Washington on the mission proposed. On the 15th of
September I received a letter from Mrs. Lincoln, postmarked Chicago,
saying that she should leave the city so as to reach New York on the
night of the 17th, and directing me to precede her to the metropolis,
and secure rooms for her at the St. Denis Hotel in the name of Mrs.
Clarke, as her visit was to be _incog._ The contents of the letter were
startling to me. I had never heard of the St. Denis, and therefore
presumed that it could not be a first-class house. And I could not
understand why Mrs. Lincoln should travel, without protection, under an
assumed name. I knew that it would be impossible for me to engage rooms
at a strange hotel for a person whom the proprietors knew nothing about.
I could not write to Mrs. Lincoln, since she would be on the road to New
York before a letter could possibly reach Chicago. I could not telegraph
her, for the business was of too delicate a character to be trusted to
the wires that would whisper the secret to every curious operator along
the line. In my embarrassment, I caught at a slender thread of hope, and
tried to derive consolation from it. I knew Mrs. Lincoln to be
indecisive about some things, and I hoped that she might change her mind
in regard to the strange programme proposed, and at the last moment
despatch me to this effect. The 16th, and then the 17th of September
passed, and no despatch reached me, so on the 18th I made all haste to
take the train for New York. After an anxious ride, I reached the city
in the evening, and when I stood alone in the streets of the great
metropolis, my heart sank within me. I was in an embarrassing situation,
and scarcely knew how to act. I did not know where the St. Denis Hotel
was, and was not certain that I should find Mrs. Lincoln there after I
should go to it. I walked up to Broadway, and got into a stage going up
to