Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House

“ [92] business in his room!” Mr. Lincoln had been sitting for a photograph, and was still in the chair. He said, very mildly, “Tad, go and unlock the door.” Tad went off muttering into his mother's room, refusing to obey. I followed him into the passage, but no coaxing would pacify him. Upon my return to the President, I found him still sitting patiently in the chair, from which he had not risen. He said: “Has not the boy opened that door?” I replied that we could do nothing with him,--he had gone off in a great pet. Mr. Lincoln's lips came together firmly, and then, suddenly rising, he strode across the passage with the air of one bent on punishment, and disappeared in the domestic apartments. Directly he returned with the key to the theatre, which he unlocked himself. “There,” said he, “go ahead, it is all right now.” He then went back to his office, followed by myself, and resumed his seat. “Tad,” said he, half apologetically, “is a peculiar child. He was violently excited when I went to him. I said, ‘Tad, do you know you are making your father a great deal of trouble?’ He burst into tears, instantly giving me up the key.”

This brief glimpse of the home life of the President, though trifling in itself, is the gauge of his entire domestic character. The Hon. W. D. Kelly, of Philadelphia, in an address delivered in that city soon after the assassination, said: “His intercourse with his family was beautiful as that with his friends. ”