As I have had for many years what my friends have playfully called “Lincoln on the brain,” let me say a few words in regard to the most marvellous man that this country has produced in the nineteenth century.  His name is to-day a household word in every civilized land.  Dr. Newman Hall, of London, has told me that when he had addressed a listless audience, he found that nothing was so certain to arouse them as to introduce the name of Abraham Lincoln.  Certainly no other name has such electric power over every true heart from Maine to Mexico.  The first time I ever saw the man whom we used to call, familiarly and affectionately, “Uncle Abe,” was at the Tremont House in Chicago, a few days after his election to the presidency.  His room was very near my own.  I sent in my card, and he greeted me with a characteristic grasp of the hand, and his first sentence rather touched my soft spot when he said:  “I have kept up with you nearly every week in the New York Independent.”  His voice had a clear, magnetic ring, and his heart seemed to be in his voice.  Three months afterwards I saw him again, riding down Broadway, New York (thronged with a gazing multitude), on his way to assume the presidency at Washington.  He stood up in a barouche holding on with his hand to the seat of the driver.  His towering figure was filled out by a long blue cloak, and a heavy cape which he wore.  On his bare head rose a thick mass of black hair—­the crown which nature gave to her king.  His large, melancholy eyes had a solemn, far-away look as if he discerned the toils and trials that awaited him.  The great patriot-President, moving slowly on toward the conflict, the glory and the martyrdom, that were reserved for him, still remains in my memory, as the most august and majestic figure that my eyes have ever beheld.  He never passed through New York again until he was borne through tears and broken hearts on his last journey to his Western tomb.

I did not see Lincoln again until two years afterwards, when I was in Washington on duty for the Christian Commission.  It was one of his public levee nights, and as soon as I came up to him, his first words were:  “Doctor, I have not seen you since we met in the Tremont House in Chicago.”  I mention this as an illustration of his marvelous memory; he never forgot a face or a name or the slightest incident.  My mother was with me at the Smithsonian, and as she was extremely desirous to see the President I took her over to the White House late on the following afternoon.  In those war times, when Washington was a camp, the White House looked more like an army barracks than the Presidential mansion.  In the entrance hall that day were piles of express boxes, among which was a little lad playing and tumbling them about.  “Will you go and find somebody to take our cards?” said my mother to the child.  He ran off and brought the Irishman, whose duty it was to receive callers at the door.  That was the same Irishman who, when the poor soldier’s wife was going in to plead for her husband’s pardon of a capital offense he had committed, said to her:  “Be sure to take your baby in with you.”  When she came out smiling and happy, Patrick said to her:  “Ah, ma’am, ’twas the baby that did it.”