droitly parried with an
untactful and coarse apologue; yet it remains to be said that a thick
veil, woven of self-conceit and half-education, blinded most politicians
to any rare quality in Lincoln, and blinded them to what was due in
decency to any man discharging his task. The evidence collected by Mr.
Rhodes as to the tone prevailing in 1864 at Washington and among those in
touch with Washington suggests that strictly political society was on the
average as poor in brain and heart as the court of the most decadent
European monarchy. It presents a stern picture of the isolation, on one
side at least, in which Lincoln had to live and work.

A little before this crowning period of Lincoln's career Walt Whitman
described him as a man in the streets of Washington could see him, if he
chose. He has been speaking of the cavalry escort which the President's
advisers insisted should go clanking about with him. "The party," he
continues, "makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the
saddle generally rides a good-sized, easy-going grey horse, is dressed in
plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, and looks about as ordinary in
attire, etc., as the commonest man. The entirely unornamental _cortege_
arouses no sensation; only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see
very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face, with the deep-cut lines,
the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We
have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes the
President goes and comes in an open barouche" (not, the poet intimates, a
very smart turn-out). "Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or
twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. They passed me
once very close, and I saw the President in the face fully as they were
moving slowly, and his look, though abstracted, happened to be directed
steadily in my eye. He bowed and smiled, but far beneath his smile I
noticed well the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or
pictures has caught the deep though subtle and indirect expression of
this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great
portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed."

The little boy on the pony was Thomas, called "Tad," a constant companion
of his father's little leisure, now dead. An elder boy, Robert, has
lived to be welcomed as Ambassador in this country, and was at this time
a student at Harvard. Willie,