izen; and he drove
about the environs, and habitually in the warm season took the long
drive to and from the Soldiers' Home, with substantially no protection.
When, at last, a guard at the White House and an escort upon his drives
were fairly forced upon him by Mr. Stanton (who was declared by the
gossip of the unfriendly to be somewhat troubled with physical
timidity), he rebelled against these incumbrances upon his freedom, and
submitted, when he had to do so, with an ill grace. To those who
remonstrated with him upon his carelessness he made various replies.
Sometimes, half jocosely, he said that it was hardly likely that any
intelligent Southerner would care to get rid of him in order to set
either Vice-President Hamlin or, later, Vice-President Johnson, in his
place. At other times he said: "What is the use of setting up the _gap_,
when the fence is down all round?" or, "I do not see that I can make
myself secure except by shutting myself up in an iron box, and in that
condition I think I could hardly satisfactorily transact the business of
the presidency." Again he said: "If I am killed, I can die but once; but
to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again." This
was an obvious reflection, easy enough of suggestion for any one who was
not within the danger line; but to live every day in accordance with it,
when the danger was never absent, called for a singular tranquillity of
temperament, and a kind of courage in which brave men are notoriously
apt to be deficient.

On April 9 the President was coming up the Potomac in a steamer from
City Point; the Comte de Chambrun was of the party and relates that, as
they were nearing Washington, Mrs. Lincoln, who had been silently gazing
toward the town, said: "That city is filled with our enemies;" whereupon
Mr. Lincoln "somewhat impatiently retorted: 'Enemies! we must never
speak of that!'" For he was resolutely cherishing the impossible idea
that Northerners and Southerners were to be enemies no longer, but that
a pacification of the spirit was coming throughout the warring land
contemporaneously with the cessation of hostilities,--a dream romantic
and hopelessly incapable of realization, but humane and beautiful.
Since he did not live to endeavor to transform it into a fact, and
thereby perhaps to have his efforts cause even seriously injurious
results, it is open to us to forget the impracticability of the fancy
and to revere the nature which in such an