Home” near Washington, was simple, and in his own case (not in that of his guests) regardless of the time, sufficiency, or quality of meals.  He cannot have given people much trouble, but he gave some to the guard who watched him, themselves keenly watched by Stanton; for he loved, if he could, to walk alone from his midnight conferences at the War Department to the White House or the Soldiers’ Home.  The barest history of the events with which he dealt is proof enough of long and hard and anxious working days, which continued with hardly a break through four years.  In that history many a complication has here been barely glanced at or clean left out; in this year, for example, the difficulty about France and Mexico and the failure of the very estimable Banks in Texas have been but briefly noted.  And there must be remembered, in addition, the duty of a President to be accessible to all people, a duty which Lincoln especially strove to fulfil.

Apart from formal receptions, the stream of callers on him must have given Lincoln many compensations for its huge monotony.  Very odd, and sometimes attractive, samples of human nature would come under his keen eye.  Now and then a visitor came neither with a troublesome request, nor for form’s sake or for curiosity, but in simple honesty to pay a tribute of loyalty or speak a word of good cheer which Lincoln received with unfeigned gratitude.  Farmers and back-country folk, of the type he could best talk with, came and had more time than he ought to have spared bestowed on them.  At long intervals there came a friend of very different days.  Some ingenious men, for instance, fitted out Dennis Hanks in a new suit of clothes and sent him as their ambassador to plead for certain political offenders.  It is much to be feared that they were more successful than they deserved, though Stanton intervened and Dennis, when he had seen him, favoured his old companion, the President, with advice to dismiss that minister.  But the immense variety of puzzling requests to be dealt with in such interviews must have made heavy demands upon a conscientious and a kind man, especially if his conscience and his kindness were, in small matters, sometimes at variance.  Lincoln sent a multitude away with that feeling, so grateful to poor people, that at least they had received such hearing as it was possible to give them; and in dealing with the applications which imposed the greatest strain on himself he made an ineffaceable impression upon the memory of his countrymen.

The American soldier did not take naturally to discipline.  Death sentences, chiefly for desertion or for sleeping or other negligence on the part of sentries, were continually being passed by courts-martial.  In some cases or at some period these used to come before the President on a stated day of the week, of which Lincoln would often speak with horror.  He was continually being appealed to in relation to such sentences by the father or mother of the culprit, or