ows; the laugh of old days was less frequent, and it did not seem to
come from the heart. Anxiety, responsibility, care, thought, disasters,
defeats, the injustice of friends, wore upon his giant frame, and his
nerves of steel became at times irritable. He said one day, with a
pathos which language cannot describe, 'I feel as though I shall _never
be glad again_.'"

Hon. Schuyler Colfax repeats a similarly pathetic expression which fell
from the lips of the afflicted President. "One morning," says Mr.
Colfax, "calling upon him on business, I found him looking more than
usually pale and careworn, and inquired the reason. He replied with the
bad news he had received at a late hour the previous night, which had
not yet been communicated to the press, adding that he had not closed
his eyes or breakfasted; and, with an expression I shall never forget,
he exclaimed, 'How willingly would I exchange places today with the
soldier who sleeps on the ground in the Army of the Potomac!'"

A lady who saw Lincoln in the summer of 1864 for the first time, and who
had expected to see "a very homely man," says: "I was totally unprepared
for the impression instantly made upon me. So bowed and sorrow-laden was
his whole person, expressing such weariness of mind and body, as he
dropped himself heavily from step to step down to the ground. But his
face!--oh, the pathos of it!--haggard, drawn into fixed lines of
unutterable sadness, with a look of loneliness, as of a soul whose depth
of sorrow and bitterness no human sympathy could ever reach. I was so
penetrated with the anguish and settled grief in every feature, that I
gazed at him through tears, and felt I had stepped upon the threshold of
a sanctuary too sacred for human feet. The impression I carried away was
that I had seen, not so much the President of the United States, as _the
saddest man in the world_."

The changes in Lincoln's appearance were noted in the subdued, refined,
purified expression of his face, as of one struggling almost against
hope, but still patiently enduring. Mr. Brooks says, "I have known
impressionable women, touched by his sad face and his gentle bearing, to
go away in tears." Another observer, Rev. C.B. Crane, wrote at the time:
"The President looks thin and careworn. His form is bowed as by a
crushing load; his flesh is wasted as by incessant solicitude; and his
face is thin and furrowed and pale, as though it had become
spiritualized by the vicarious pain