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THE HEART OF LINCOLN

By LA SALLE CORBELL PICKETT

NO,” I heard a retired army officer say not long ago, “I do not care to hear a lecture on Lincoln. I know more about him than that man does. The only vote I evei cast for President was for him, and he signed my first commission with his own hand. The stamp was not used then and he signed it himself.”

The old soldier spoke with the pride of one claiming a patent of nobility, as that commission certainly was, and I thought how fortunate those old boys were. The new ones, however bravely they may do their duty, can never have commissions signed by Abraham Lincoln. Well might they claim to know him better than the lecturer who appears before the public with eloquent words and slides bearing skillfully drawn and artistically col- ored illustrations. He never dwelt in that deep, warm, human heart and was never borne upward on the prayers that went heavenward from the agonized soul of the great War President.

In Omaha last summer I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Ed- ward Cox Davis, one of the few still left to us who knew and loved Abraham Lincoln, the man, and he talked to me of him as a man talks of a friend whom neither time nor death can take away.

The scene of that affectionate acquaintance of long years ago was Quincy, Illinois, where Lincoln was practicing law and Ed- ward Cox Davis was evolving that musical genius which (his love in youth) has not deserted him now that ninety-one years have left their snows upon his head and their roses in his heart.

When General Lyon was killed, Mr. Davis composed the music afterward famous as “The Lincoln Funeral March.” He sent the manuscript to his publishers in St. Louis and when the cele- brated Silver Band went froA that city to the last sad scene in Springfield they selected this march and renamed it for the sol- emn occasion upon which it was used. Though his fingers are now cramped by long use and painful disease, Mr. Davis played the march for me with wonderfully tender and pathetic expres- sion.

IN that olden time the Virginia lad, George Pickett, went to Quincy to study law with his uncle, who was then law partner of Abraham Lincoln. He soon made friends with the grave, gentle, pathetic, humorous, tender-hearted Illinois lawyer. The boy had a melodious voice and played accompaniments to his songs. Mr. Davis said that when he played and sang Lincoln would sit listening, his long legs wrapped around each other un- der his chair and the tears trickling down his face.

In after years, when the western lawyer guided his country through the most terrible crisis in her history and the flash of the Virginia boy’s sword led the soldiers of the Confederacy to the field of fire, the memories of those old days in Quincy filled the long distance between them with unfading flowers of affec- tion.

Standing on the field of Gettysburg and looking at the deadly height where the final charge was made, Lincoln said to one of his generals:

“Who can tell for how much of that bloodshed I am respon- sible. I made George Pickett a soldier.”

Listening to the old musician as he talked of his old friend whom death had made eternally present with him, I was im- pressed anew with the marvelous human side of the man around whose memory so many tender recollections cling. Tradition has not, as in the case of other men whose power has been deeply impressed upon their own era and succeeding ages, caught him away into the far-off realm of the demi-gods, where his humanity was lost to the throbbing heart of the world. His all- pervading sympathy and love are vital now as when, in the hos-” pital at City Point, looking at a terribly wounded soldier, he threw up his arms and groaned: “Oh, this awful, awful war!” Bending over the soldier with sobs and falling tears he said: “Poor boy! Poor boy! You must live! You must!”

“I intend to,” was the reply. That intention was carried out, perhaps by the power of the humanity which had laid hold of and renewed the vital principle.

Lincoln went his way with a friendly handclasp and a kind word for each, and when he was gone one who had witnessed the scene said: “For us it as a different place — we had seen

there the soul of our Chief.”

The human side of Lincoln gave him the humor that saved his life and cheered his people when the clouds of war hung most darkly over the land. His cheerful good nature and un- expected quips of words irradiated the gloom of that mournful time as a little star twinkles out now and then through the clouds of a stormy night. He disclaimed the invention of sto-

LA SALLE CORBELL PICKETT

Widow of General Charles E. Pickett, who led the Confederate charge at Gettysburg.

ries, saying that he did not make them his by repeating them, but those who heard them knew how truly his voice and look and smile made them his as he told them in his quizzical way, never for the sake of the story but to illumine the subject nearest at hand. He did not object to spoiling a good story in the interests of truth, as when he denied his alleged effort to throw light on a dark situation by remarking in a discussion on the capture of some brigadiers with their horses down in Virginia: “I am sorry about the horses; I can make brigadiers,” saying he be- lieved that Hannibal said something like that.

Some one has written a book on “Lincoln, the Boy and the Man.” Contemplating the title, one cannot help wondering if the solemn, sad-faced man whom we have learned to know in books and pictures ever was a boy. He seems to have accepted early and without question the hoary mantle of the years. On February 2, 1848, when serving in the House, he wrote to a friend in Illinois:

“I take up my pen to tell you that Mr. Stephens of Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, has just concluded the very best speech of an hour’s length I ever heard. My old, withered, dry eyes are full of tears yet.”

He was then not quite thirty-seven but he appears to have been born old and would probably never have become young had he lived centuries.

The speech which attracted the admiring attention of Mr. Lincoln led to a friendship that might, in more favorable circum- stances, have had momentous results. Sixteen years later, at the Peace Confereice in Hampton Roads, the great War Presi- dent took the “slim, pale-faced, consumptive man” aside and, holding up a blank piece of paper, said: “Stephens, let me write Union at the top of that paper and you may write what you like under it.” If he “slim, pale-faced man” and the tall, gaunt, sorrowful man, who had looked upon tortures until they had woven themselves into every line of that rugged, pain-drawn

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.countenance, could have filled out that paper at their own will, nearly half a century of our national history might have been ‘^differently written.

/^NCE only I saw the deep and tender humanity looking out from the sad, earnest eyes that were so soon to be closed to the sorrows of the world. The Stars and Bars had drooped forever around their flagstaff and the Stars and Stripes floated irom thG Capitol at Richmond but there was no light of victory in those sorrowful eyes. They held but the sadness of all the pain they had looked upon, softened only by the great love that made them beautiful. The terrible struggle of the bloody four years was over, but there was no triumph in the melancholy face. Its heavy lines of grief were lightened only by the gentle soul that looked sunnily out upon the world.

Richmond was full of northern soldiers, and their great leader stood at our door and asked if George Pickett was there. *‘I am Abraham Lincoln,” he said. “The President!” I exclaimed. Time can never efface from my memory the melody of his voice and the light in his eyes as he replied: “No; just Abraham Lincoln, George s old friend.” He went down the steps, leaving with rne the inextinguishable radiance of one instant when I looked into the soul of Abraham Lincoln.

Mnny years later, in a northern town, I met a veteran who told me that he was a member of the President’s escort on that day. When the party reached the corner of Sixth and Lee streets, Lincoln stopped a moment and then turned toward the house on the corner. As he started toward the door some of the escort followed him, not knowing into what danger he might run in entering an unknown house in a hostile city. He waved the sol- ders back and went on alone mounting the steps two at a time. When he returned the party went on and his followers never mew where their Chief had been nor what tender ties bound the northern President to the master of that southern home.

T INCOLN brought to us the peace that he loved, but not for long was It to remain with us. It vanished like a beautiful dream, to be followed by a darkness blacker than the clouds of war, by despair such as we had never known when rivers of blood had coursed through our land. For only a few days later that great soul passed beyond the sorrows ancf sympathies of earth and the world was circled by the sad message of the War Secretary as he stood with uplifted hand before the broken- hearted, awe-stricken people and said: “He belongs to the ages now!” , ^

News Worth Rememberi:

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Lightning Changes on the Coast

The anti-Japanese agitation has presented a rapidly-changing aspect during the week. On February 3, the California legisla- ture, under pressure from President Roosevelt and Governor Gillett, rejected the Drew anti-alien bill, and the vote seemed to indicate that California had acceded to the request from Wash- ington that the states keep their hands off and allow the state department to manage Japanese immigration. On the same day Count Komura in Tokio, on behalf of the empire, an- nounced the adoption by Japan of a policy of discouraging emi- gration of Japanese to far-off lands, and the encouragement of their settling in Manchuria and other nearby regions of conti- nental Asia. At the same time statistics were made public by the Japanese consul at Portland, Oregon, showing that Jap- anese are returning to Asia twice as fast as they are coming here. In the face of all these things, however, the lower house of Nevada passed a drastic anti -Japanese resolution insulting in its terms, referring to the Japanese as “parasites”, and other- wise tending to heighten the tension. To intensify the matter, a measure for segregating Japanese in the public schools was passed through the California legislature, calling forth another message of protest from Roosevelt whose plea was that this school law is the most offensive of all to Japanese pride. At the last moment, moved by an earnest plea from the speaker of the house in which he solemnly assured the legislators that he was in possession of information which he could not make public but which convinced him that the bill should not become a law, unanimous consent was given for the reconsideration of the measure, and at this writing the matter is pending. Speaker Stanton has been thanked by the president for “high and patri- otic services”, and the anti -Japanese party is asking definite in- formation as to what the danger is which the speaker so im- pressively suggested, but did not describe.

Roosevelt Vetoes Census Bill

The bill passed by Congress for taking the census of 1910 pro- vided for the appointment of the enumerators after “non-com- petitive examinations”. President Roosevelt vetoed it on Feb- ruary 5, because, as he said, it provided for a spoils system, in which the plums would be divided among the politicians of the two parties. A bi-partisan spoils system the president suggests is no better than a spoils system of one party. Therefore he demands that the census enumerators shall be selected from those qualifying under the competitive civil service examina- tions.— Senator Teller devoted a speech to argument that Roose- velt is exceeding his powers as president in withholding from the Senate the papers in the matter of his consent to the mer- ger of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company and the United States Steel Corporation.

News Worth Remembering

The great American storm of last week seems to have swept on around the globe,— or at least a warm wave similar to the one which preceded our blizzard thawed the snow from western Europe, and inundated the valleys of the Rhine and other German rivers, sweeping away bridges flooding towns and cities, and drowning people with their flocks’ and herds. In some streams the flood was the highest for fiftv years. ,

Taft and Sherman Elected at Last

Before this reaches the reader, Mr. Taft will have become really President-elect. The constitution provides that the presi- dent and vice president be chosen by electors. Custom has re- pealed the constitution in this regard by a public opinion which requires the electors to vote as the people tell them to vote The election of Chamberlain in Oregon, and several other senators nominated by direct primaries, mark the beginning of a similar repeal of the constitution as to senators.

President-elect Approves Panama Work

President-elect Taft has been making a personal inspection of the work on the Panama Canal, with a committee of eminent engineers. At a public gathering in the Canal Zone on Feb- ruary 4, he said he was pleased with the work done, and pre- dicted the completion of the project in 1915, at the latest. The engineers and Mr. Taft are quoted as expressing themselves quite satisfied with the type of canal now being constructed, and assured of the reliability of the Gatun dam on which the work depends. No change in plans is forecasted.

Governor Haskell Indicted

President Roosevelt’s enemies are all watching with intense interest the things which are happening in the closing days of his administration. Nothing has developed in the cases of Mr. Pulitzer of the New York World and Mr. Smith of the Indian- apolis News, who in popular belief have for some time been on the verge of indictment for criminal libel for accusing relatives of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft of making profits out of the ac- quisition of the Panama Canal. But another of the president’s dearest foes. Governor Haskell of Oklahoma, has been indicted by a federal grand jury at Muscogee for conspiracy to defraud the government in connection with town lots in that city. When the indictment was made public in Muscogee, twenty citizens then at a dinner party left the table and in evening dress marched in a body to the court house to sign the governor’s bond. Afterwards the numbers desirious of going bail for Hask- ell became so great that blank sheets were pasted to the bond, and these were signed by hundreds. — The Supreme Court of the United States has denied a rehearing in the “80-cent gas” case from New York. This case establishes the right of the pub- lic to regulate rates down to the point of taking away the value of franchises of public-service corporations. — The same court decided that Lewis Voight & Sons of Cincinnati need not pay a bill of $60,000 for goods sold them by the Wall-paper trust. The ruling is that a trust cannot collect a bill for goods sold in the course of the monopolized business.

Safety-Appliance Law Upheld

The United States law requiring the railways to equip all cars engaged in interstate commerce with safety brakes and other safety devices was upheld in the United States Circuit Court of