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them fight at me unrestrained.”
My playful response would be, “The way to learn is to hear both sides.”
I once assured him Chase and certain others who were scheming to supplant him ought to be restrained in their evil designs.
“Do good to them who hate you,” was his generous answer, “and turn their ill — will into friendship.”
I often told Mr. Lincoln that God would not let any harm come of him. We had passed through four long years — terrible and bloody years — unscathed, and I believed we would be released from all danger.
He gradually grew into that belief himself, and the old gloomy notion of his unavoidable taking-off was becoming dimmer as time passed away.
Cheerfulness merged into joyfulness.
The skies cleared, the end of the war rose dimly into view when the great blow came and shut him out forever.
For a glimpse of
Lincoln's habits while a resident of
Washington and an executive officer, there is no better authority than
John Hay, who served as one of his secretaries.
In 1866,
Mr. Hay, then a member of the
United States Legation in
Paris, wrote me an interesting account, which so faithfully delineates
Lincoln in his public home that I cannot refrain from quoting it entire.
Although the letter was written in answer to a list of questions I asked, and was prepared without any attempt at arrangement, still it is none the less interesting.
“
Lincoln went to bed ordinarily,” it begins,
from ten to eleven o'clock, unless he happened to be kept up by important news, in which case he would
