“The Cape Fear,” I said.

“Is—­is the General a nice man?” asked Mr. Lincoln, his eyes twinkling.

“Yes, sir, he is that,” I answered heartily.  “And not a man in the army wants anything when he is around.  You should see that Army of the Mississippi, sir.  They arrived in Goldsboro’ in splendid condition.”

He got up and gathered his coat-tails under his arms, and began to walk up and down the cabin.

“What do the boys call the General?” he asked.

I told him “Uncle Billy.”  And, thinking the story of the white socks might amuse him, I told him that.  It did amuse him.

“Well, now,” he said, “any man that has a nickname like that is all right.  That’s the best recommendation you can give the General—­just say ‘Uncle Billy.’” He put one lip over the other.  “You’ve given ’Uncle Billy’ a good recommendation, Steve,” he said.  “Did you ever hear the story of Mr. Wallace’s Irish gardener?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, when Wallace was hiring his gardener he asked him whom he had been living with.

“‘Misther Dalton, sorr.’

“‘Have you a recommendation, Terence?’

“’A ricommindation is it, sorr?  Sure I have nothing agin Misther Dalton, though he moightn’t be knowing just the respict the likes of a first-class garthener is entitled to.’”

He did not laugh.  He seldom does, it seems, at his own stories.  But I could not help laughing over the “ricommindation” I had given the General.  He knew that I was embarrassed, and said kindly:—­ “Now tell me something about ‘Uncle Billy’s Bummers.’  I hear that they have a most effectual way of tearing up railroads.”

I told him of Poe’s contrivance of the hook and chain, and how the heaviest rails were easily overturned with it, and how the ties were piled and fired and the rails twisted out of shape.  The President listened to every word with intense interest.

“By Jing!” he exclaimed, “we have got a general.  Caesar burnt his bridges behind him, but Sherman burns his rails.  Now tell me some more.”

He helped me along by asking questions.  Then I began to tell him how the negroes had flocked into our camps, and how simply and plainly the General had talked to them, advising them against violence of any kind, and explaining to them that “Freedom” meant only the liberty to earn their own living in their own way, and not freedom from work.

“We have got a general, sure enough,” he cried.  “He talks to them plainly, does he, so that they understand?  I say to you, Brice,” he went on earnestly, “the importance of plain talk can’t be overestimated.  Any thought, however abstruse, can be put in speech that a boy or a negro can grasp.  Any book, however deep, can be written in terms that everybody can comprehend, if a man only tries hard enough.  When I was a boy I used to hear the neighbors talking, and it bothered me so because I could not understand them that I used to sit up half the night thinking things out for myself.  I remember that I did not know what the word demonstrate meant.  So I stopped my studies then and there and got a volume of Euclid.  Before I got through I could demonstrate everything in it, and I have never been bothered with demonstrate since.”