Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House

[224] graves — some without a spear of grass to hide their newness — that hold the bodies of volunteers.

While we stood in the soft evening air, watching the faint trembling of the long tendrils of waving willow, and feeling the dewy coolness that was flung out by the old oaks above us, Mr. Lincoln joined us, and stood silent, too, taking in the scene.

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest,

he said, softly.

There was something so touching in the picture opened before us,--the nameless graves, the solemn quiet, the tender twilight air, but more particularly our own feminine disposition to be easily melted, I suppose,--that it made us cry as if we stood beside the tomb of our own dead, and gave point to the lines which he afterwards quoted:--

And women o'er the graves shall weep,
Where nameless heroes calmly sleep.

Around the “Home” grows every variety of tree, particularly of the evergreen class. Their branches brushed into the carriage as we passed along, and left with us that pleasant, woody smell belonging to leaves. One of the ladies, catching a bit of green from one of these intruding branches, said it was cedar, and another thought it spruce.

“Let me discourse on a theme I understand,” said the President. “I know all about trees in ”