forgot all about it,—­nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened.  When I went home, I told my wife about it; and a few days after I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat.  She thought it was ‘a sign’ that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”

From this time forth anonymous threats and friendly warnings came thick and fast up to the fatal day when the real event befell.  Some of these he kept, and after his death they were found in his desk, labeled “Assassination Letters.”  Before he left Springfield for his journey to Washington, many ingenious fears were suggested to him; but, except for his change of route toward the close of his journey, none of these presagings visibly influenced him, and his change of purpose concerning the passage through Baltimore was never afterward recalled by him without vexation.  From that time forth he resolutely ignored all danger of this kind.  During most of the time that he was in office any one could easily call upon him, unguarded, at the White House; he moved through the streets of Washington like any private citizen; 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.