I shall have to
see Mr. Stanton alone, and you must excuse me," and taking him by the
hand he continued, "Good-bye. I hope you will feel perfectly easy about
having nominated me; don't be troubled about it; _I forgive you_."

A gentleman who, after the dreadful disaster at Fredericksburg, called
at the White House with news direct from the front, says that Lincoln
appeared so overwhelmed with grief that he was led to remark, "I
heartily wish I might be a welcome messenger of good news instead,--that
I could tell you how to conquer or get rid of these rebellious States."
Looking up quickly, with a marked change of expression, Lincoln said:
"That reminds me of two boys in Illinois who took a short cut across an
orchard, and did not become aware of the presence of a vicious dog until
it was too late to reach either fence. One was spry enough to escape the
attack by climbing a tree; but the other started around the tree, with
the dog in hot pursuit, until by making smaller circles than it was
possible for his pursuer to make, he gained sufficiently to grasp the
dog's tail, and held with desperate grip until nearly exhausted, when he
hailed his companion and called to him to come down. 'What for?' said
the boy. 'I want you to help me let this dog go.' If I could only let
them go!" said the President, in conclusion; "but that is the trouble. I
am compelled to hold on to them and make them stay."

In speaking of Lincoln's fortitude under his trials and sufferings, Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote: "Although we believe he has never made any
religious profession, we see evidence that in passing through this
dreadful national crisis he has been forced by the very anguish of the
struggle to look upward, where any rational creature must look for
support. No man has suffered more and deeper, albeit with a dry, weary,
patient pain, that seemed to some like insensibility. 'Whichever way it
ends,' he said to the writer, 'I have the impression that I sha'n't last
long after it's over.' After the dreadful repulse of Fredericksburg, his
heavy eyes and worn and weary air told how our reverses wore upon him;
and yet there was a never-failing fund of patience at bottom that
sometimes rose to the surface in some droll, quaint saying or story,
that forced a laugh even from himself."

The care and sorrow which Lincoln was called upon to endure in the
responsibilities of his high position graved their melancholy marks on
each feature of his fa