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went into the waiting room and sat down with a lot of others
on the benches, and the secretary asked one after another to
tell him what they wanted. After the secretary had been
through the line, he went in, and then came back to the door
and motioned for me. I went up to that anteroom, and the
secretary said: ``That is the President's door right over there.
Just rap on it and go right in.'' I never was so taken aback,
friends, in all my life, never. The secretary himself made it
worse for me, because he had told me how to go in and then
went out another door to the left and shut that. There I was, in
the hallway by myself before the President of the United States
of America's door. I had been on fields of battle, where the
shells did sometimes shriek and the bullets did sometimes hit
me, but I always wanted to run. I have no sympathy with the
old man who says, ``I would just as soon march up to the
cannon's mouth as eat my dinner.'' I have no faith in a man
who doesn't know enough to be afraid when he is being shot
at. I never was so afraid when the shells came around us at
Antietam as I was when I went into that room that day; but I
finally mustered the courage-- I don't know how I ever did--
and at arm's length tapped on the door. The man inside did
not help me at all, but yelled out, ``Come in and sit down!''
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Well, I went in and sat down on the edge of a chair, and
wished I were in Europe, and the man at the table did not look
up. He was one of the world's greatest men, and was made
great by one single rule. Oh, that all the young people of
Philadelphia were before me now and I could say just this one
thing, and that they would remember it. I would give a lifetime
for the effect it would have on our city and on civilization.
Abraham Lincoln's principle for greatness can be adopted by
nearly all. This was his rule: Whatsoever he had to do at all,
he put his whole mind into it and held it all there until that
was all done. That makes men great almost anywhere. He
stuck to those papers at that table and did not look up at me,
and I sat there trembling. Finally, when he had put the string
around his papers, he pushed them over to one side and
looked over to me, and a smile came over his worn face. He
said: ``I am a very busy man and have only a few minutes to
spare. Now tell me in the fewest words what it is you want.'' I
began to tell him, and mentioned the case, and he said: ``I
have heard all about it and you do not need to say any more.
Mr. Stanton was talking to me only a few days ago about that.
You can go to the hotel and rest assured that the President
never did sign an order to shoot a boy under twenty years of
age, and never will. You can say that to his mother anyhow.''
Then he said to me, ``How is it going in the field?'' I said,
``We sometimes get discouraged.'' And he said: ``It is all right.
We are going to win out now. We are getting very near the
light. No man ought to wish to be President of the United
States, and I will be glad when I get through; then Tad and I
are going out to Springfield, Illinois. I have bought a farm out
there and I don't care if I again earn only twenty-five cents a
day. Tad has a mule team, and we are going to plant onions.''
Then he asked me, ``Were you brought up on a farm?'' I
said, ``Yes; in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts.'' He then
threw his leg over the corner of the big chair and said, ``I have
heard many a time, ever since I was young, that up there in
those hills you have to sharpen the noses of the sheep in order
to get down to the grass between the rocks.'' He was so
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familiar, so everyday, so farmer-like, that I felt right at home
with him at once.
He then took hold of another roll of paper, and looked up
at me and said, ``Good morning.'' I took the hint then and got
up and went out. After I had gotten out I could not realize I
had seen the President of the United States at all. But a few
days later, when still in the city, I saw the crowd pass through
the East Room by the coffin of Abraham Lincoln, and when I
looked at the upturned face of the murdered President I felt
then that the man I had seen such a short time before, who,
so simple a man, so plain a man, was one of the greatest men
that God ever raised up to lead a nation on to ultimate liberty.
Yet he was only ``Old Abe'' to his neighbors. When they had
the second funeral, I was invited among others, and went out
to see that same coffin put back in the tomb at Springfield.
Around the tomb stood Lincoln's old neighbors, to whom he
was just ``Old Abe.'' Of course that is all they would say. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]