A characteristic anecdote showing Lincoln’s friendship and love of old associations is told among those relating to his last days at Springfield.  When he was about to leave for Washington he went to the dingy little law office, sat down on the couch, and said to his law-partner, Herndon, “Billy, you and I have been together nearly twenty years, and have never ‘passed a word.’  Will you let my name stay on the old sign till I come back from Washington?” The tears started to Mr. Herndon’s eyes.  He put out his hand.  “Mr. Lincoln,” said he, “I will never have any other partner while you live”; and to the day of the assassination all the doings of the firm were in the name of “Lincoln & Herndon.”

Governor Bross, of Illinois, relates that he was with Lincoln at Springfield on the day before he left for Washington.  “We were walking slowly to his home from some place where we had met, and the condition and prospects of the country, and his vast responsibility in assuming the position of President, were the subjects of his thoughts.  These were discussed with a breadth and anxiety full of that pathos peculiar to Mr. Lincoln in his thoughtful moods.  He seemed to have a thorough prescience of the dangers through which his administration was to pass.  No President, he said, had ever had before him such vast and far-reaching responsibilities.  He regarded war—­long, bitter, and dreadful—­as almost sure to come.  He distinctly and reverently placed his hopes for the result in the strength and guidance of Him on whom Washington relied in the darkest hours of the Revolution.  He would take the place to which Providence and his countrymen had called him, and do the best he could for the integrity and the welfare of the Republic.  For himself, he scarcely expected ever to see Illinois again.”

On the morning of the 11th of February, 1861, Lincoln left his home in Springfield for the scene where he was to spend the most anxious, toilsome, and painful years of his life.  An elaborate programme had been prepared for his journey to Washington, which was to conduct him through the principal cities of Indiana, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and consume much of the time intervening before the 4th of March.  Special trains, preceded by pilot-engines, were prepared for his accommodation.  He was accompanied at his departure by his wife and three sons, and a party of friends, including Governor Yates, ex-Governor Moore, Dr. W.M.  Wallace (his brother-in-law), N.B.  Judd, O.H.  Browning, Ward H. Lamon, David Davis, Col.  E.E.  Ellsworth, and John M. Hay and J.G.  Nicolay, the two latter to be his private secretaries.  Mr. Lamon thus graphically describes the incidents of his leave-taking:  “It was a gloomy day; heavy clouds floated overhead, and a cold rain was falling.  Long before eight o’clock a great mass of people had collected at the railway station.  At precisely five minutes before eight, Mr. Lincoln, preceded by Mr. Wood, emerged