President whispered, "or you'll have me crying in a
minute."

When the last man had gone he stood alone before his window in brooding
silence. A tender smile overspread his face and he drew a deep breath.
In the hills of Pennsylvania he saw a picture--a mother in the door of a
humble home waiting for her boy. He is coming down the road with swift,
strong step. She sees and rushes to meet him with a cry of joy, holds
him in her arms without words a long, long while and will not let him
go. And then she leads him into the house, falls on her knees and thanks
God.

He smiles again and forgets the burden of the day.

CHAPTER XVIII

DIPLOMACY

In the whirlwind of passion, intrigue, slander and hate which had
circled the head of the new President since the day of his Inauguration,
the mother of his children had not been spared.

The First Lady of the Land had found her position as difficult in its
way as her husband had found his. She had met the cynical criticism at
first with dignity, reserve, and contempt. But as it increased in
violence and virulence she had more than once lost her temper. She had
never been blessed with the serenity of spirit that with Lincoln in his
trying hours touched the heights of genius.

She was just a human little woman who loved her husband devotedly and
hated every man and woman who hated him. And when her patience was
exhausted she said things as she thought them, with a contempt for
consequences as sublime as it was dangerous.

From the moment of the opening of the war she hated the South, not only
because the Southern people had flung the shadow of death over her
splendid social career and blighted the brightest dream of her life by
war, but she had a more intimate and personal reason for this hatred.
Her own flesh and blood had gone into the struggle against her and the
husband she loved. Both her brothers born in the South, were in the
Confederate army fighting to tear the house down over her head. One of
these brothers had been made the Commandant of Libby Prison in Richmond.
The woman in her could never forgive them.

And yet men in the North who sought the destruction of her husband saw
how they might use the fact of her Southern kin to their own gain, and
did it with the most cruel and bitter malignity.

One thing she was determined to do--maintain her position in a way to
put it beyond the reach of petty spite and gossip. She had always
resented the imputation of