I have no time now to tell you all that I have seen and heard.  I have ridden with the President, and have gone with him on errands of mercy and errands of cheer.  I have been almost within sight of what we hope is the last struggle of this frightful war.  I have listened to the guns of Five Forks, where Sheridan and Warren bore their own colors in the front of the charge, I was with Mr. Lincoln while the battle of Petersburg was raging, and there were tears in his eyes.

Then came the retreat of Lee and the instant pursuit of Grant, and —­Richmond.  The quiet General did not so much as turn aside to enter the smoking city he had besieged for so long.  But I went there, with the President.  And if I had one incident in my life to live over again, I should choose this.  As we were going up the river, a disabled steamer lay across the passage in the obstruction of piles the Confederates had built.  Mr. Lincoln would not wait.  There were but a few of us in his party, and we stepped into Admiral Porter’s twelve-oared barge and were rowed to Richmond, the smoke of the fires still darkening the sky.  We landed within a block of Libby Prison.

With the little guard of ten sailors he marched the mile and a half to General Weitzel’s headquarters,—­the presidential mansion of the Confederacy.  You can imagine our anxiety.  I shall remember him always as I saw him that day, a tall, black figure of sorrow, with the high silk hat we have learned to love.  Unafraid, his heart rent with pity, he walked unharmed amid such tumult as I have rarely seen.  The windows filled, the streets ahead of us became choked, as the word that the President was coming ran on like quick-fire.  The mob shouted and pushed.  Drunken men reeled against him.  The negroes wept aloud and cried hosannas.  They pressed upon him that they might touch the hem of his coat, and one threw himself on his knees and kissed the President’s feet.

Still he walked on unharmed, past the ashes and the ruins.  Not as a conqueror was he come, to march in triumph.  Not to destroy, but to heal.  Though there were many times when we had to fight for a path through the crowds, he did not seem to feel the danger.

Was it because he knew that his hour was not yet come?

To-day, on the boat, as we were steaming between the green shores of the Potomac, I overheard him reading to Mr. Sumner:—­

          “Duncan is in his grave;
        After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;
        Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
        Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
        Can touch him further.”

          WILLARD’S hotel, Washington, April 10, 1865.

I have looked up the passage, and have written it in above.  It haunts me.

CHAPTER XV

MAN OF SORROW

The train was late—­very late.  It was Virginia who first caught sight of the new dome of the Capitol through the slanting rain, but she merely pressed her lips together and said nothing.  In the dingy brick station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad more than one person paused to look after them, and a kind-hearted lady who had been in the car kissed the girl good-by.