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diff --git a/old/65810-0.txt b/old/65810-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f7dddc4..0000000 --- a/old/65810-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2438 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Christmas for Tad, by Helen Topping Miller - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Christmas for Tad - A Story of Mary and Abraham Lincoln - -Author: Helen Topping Miller - -Release Date: July 9, 2021 [eBook #65810] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was - produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital - Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS FOR TAD *** - - - - - CHRISTMAS FOR TAD - A Story of Mary and Abraham Lincoln - - - BY - HELEN TOPPING MILLER - - - LONGMANS, GREEN AND COMPANY - NEW YORK · LONDON · TORONTO - 1956 - - LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC. - 55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 3 - - LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Ltd. - 6 & 7 CLIFFORD STREET, LONDON W 1 - - LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. - 20 CRANFIELD ROAD, TORONTO 16 - - CHRISTMAS FOR TAD - - COPYRIGHT · 1956 - BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR ANY - PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM - - PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY - LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO - - FIRST EDITION - - LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 56-10108 - - Printed in the United States of America - - - - - 1 - - -The package was very tightly sealed. - -There was a heavy cord around it fastened with thick blobs of wax and -Tad Lincoln, who had been christened Thomas, stood fidgeting while his -father worked at it patiently, with the old horn-handled knife that -opened and shut with a sharp click. - -Outside was the gloom of late December. That December of 1863, when the -fortunes of the Federal armies had taken a little swing upward, but when -war still lay like a poisonous, tragic, and heartbreaking shadow over a -whole country. But to Tad Lincoln December meant Christmas, and packages -meant surprises, important to a ten-year-old boy. - -Tad stood first on one foot, then the other, impatiently, because Papa -was so slow in opening this package. A round-faced boy, with his -mother’s brown eyes and hair, he was a sturdy figure in the miniature -uniform of a Union colonel that his father had had made for him. The -coat fitted him jauntily, all the brass buttons fastened up in -regulation fashion; there were epaulets and braid and long trousers -lying properly over his toes, so that the copper toes of his boots -showed. He had a belt and a sword, but he was not wearing them now. -Swords were for engagements, reviews, and parades, the officers of -Company K had instructed him. Among friends indoors an officer took off -his belt and hung it in a safe place. - -His father’s fingers were mighty long and bony, Tad was thinking, and -awkward, too. One thumbnail was thicker and darker than the other nails -and Tad touched it gently with his forefinger. - -“What makes your thumb like that, Papa?” he asked. - -The long yellowed hand put down the knife and the deep-set, steel-gray -eyes of Abraham Lincoln studied the thumb intently as though he had -never seen it before. - -“Once there was an ax, Tad,” he drawled, his heavy eyebrows flicking up -and down, his long mouth quirked up at one corner. “It didn’t want to go -where I aimed it, so I said, says I, now who is boss here, Mister Ax, -you or Abe Lincoln? You chop where I aim for you to chop, Mister Ax. So -I made it hit where I wanted it to hit but it jumped back and took a -whack at me just to show me that it could be the boss if it wanted to.” - -“It might have cut your hand off,” worried Tad, still rubbing the dark -nail. - -“It might—but it didn’t. It was a well-meaning ax. Just independent, -like a lot of people.” - -“People take whacks at you, don’t they? I hear about it,” Tad said. - -“Yes, some of ’em do.” Lincoln picked up the knife again, poked at the -stubborn seals. “But mostly afterwards they cooperate.” - -“Those people in New York didn’t,” insisted Tad. “Mother was scared to -death when those draft riots were on and people yelled at her in that -store. The police had to stand all around us with guns and you know -something? Bob was scared but I wasn’t. Ole Bob was plumb scared green.” - -“That was a bad time, son.” A seal came loose at last and fell in -scarlet fragments to the rug. He attacked a second one, gripping the -knife, the skin stretched tight over his fleshless knuckles. “It was bad -because people weren’t mad at you. They were mad at me, not at Bob or -your mother. They didn’t want to be drafted to fight in this war and I -said they had to be drafted.” - -“Well, golly, you’ve got to have soldiers! General Grant and General -Rosecrans and everybody are yelling for more troops. You have to get -’em, you can’t make ’em out of air. Hurry and open it, Papa. Don’t you -want to see what’s in it?” - -“I think I know what’s in it. Yes, Tad,” he went on musingly, as though -he talked to himself. “I’m supposed to make soldiers out of air; anyway -the New York newspapers seemed to think so. Make ’em out of air and feed -’em on air and give ’em air to shoot with.” - -“And then if General Lee licks us you’re to blame!” cried Tad. “Oh, I -know, John Hay and Mr. Nicolay hide the papers but I find ’em. Papa, I -read where one New York paper called you a gorilla.” - -“What do you think, Tad? Don’t I look like one a little?” Lincoln -dropped the knife, shambled bent across the room, his long arms -dangling, his hands almost touching the floor. As the boy drew back -aghast he bared his long teeth and snarled and Tad began to cry -suddenly. - -“No—no! Don’t do it!” - -Lincoln laughed loudly, lifted him, setting the lad on his knee, holding -him close. “For a man wearing the Union uniform, you scare easy, -Colonel,” he teased. “Remember this, Tad. Names never hurt anybody. And -the gorilla is one beast that’s never been tamed and only a heavy chain -can master him.” - -“Open the box,” gulped Tad, scrubbing his eyes with the cuff of his blue -Union coat. “If anybody sent me a Christmas present, I’d want to know -what it was.” - -Lincoln dug the last seal away, cut the cord, and tore off the heavy -paper. “Now, John Hay would say I’m a fool to open this,” he remarked. -“He’ll say there could be something in it to blind or cripple me.” - -“Maybe you’d better not, Papa,” Tad cried anxiously. “Let me call -somebody.” - -“No, Tad. I trust the man who brought it and I know what’s in it. It -isn’t a Christmas present exactly. I earned it in a kind of a way. -Look!” He opened the heavy box and the smaller one inside that was -covered with gold-colored plush. - -“A watch!” exclaimed the boy. - -“A solid gold watch.” Lincoln held it out carefully on his big palm. -“From Mr. James Hoes, Esquire, of Chicago. I won it, Tad. Mr. Hoes -offered the watch as a prize for the one making the biggest contribution -of funds to their Sanitary Commission fair. I sent them a copy of the -Emancipation Proclamation and they auctioned it off for three thousand -dollars, so I won the watch.” - -“You’ve already got a watch, Papa, but I haven’t got one,” said Tad -eagerly. - -Lincoln drew his old watch from his pocket, loosed it from the chain and -seals. “I don’t have a solid gold watch. This old turnip is sort of -worn. I guess I timed too many speeches and juries with it. But you’re -not big enough for a watch, Tad. Not till you can wear a vest and have -enough stomach to hold up a chain.” - -“Willie had a vest and he wasn’t so very much bigger than me,” argued -Tad. - -A shadow of pain ran over his father’s gaunt face and the tears, always -quick when any emotion stirred him, were bright in his sunken eyes. The -agony of Willie’s untimely death was still raw and aching in his heart. - -“Willie was twelve years old, Tad. When you are twelve you can have a -vest.” - -“And a watch?” - -“And a watch. Not this one.” Lincoln clicked the fastening of the bright -new timepiece and dropped it into his pocket, along with the key that -wound it. “I guess Bob will have to have this old one. Bob’s a man now -and a man needs a watch.” - -“He thinks he’s a man just because he can shave,” Tad scoffed. He -studied his father’s face for a moment. “Why did you grow a beard, Papa? -You didn’t have a beard when I was a little boy.” - -“You’re still a little boy, fellow.” Lincoln gave him a poke in ribs. -“Maybe I raised these whiskers because a little girl in New York asked -me to. Maybe I just did it to keep my chin warm.” - -“All Bob has is little patches in front of his ears. They look silly.” - -Lincoln lifted his long body erect and walked to the window. - -“You’d better be respectful to your big brother, Tad,” he said dryly. -“Some of the newspapers that don’t like me are printing that Bob Lincoln -has made a million dollars out of this war. For a young fellow still in -Harvard only twenty years old, I’d say he had uncanny perspicacity.” - -Tad frowned thoughtfully. “It’s a lie, ain’t it, Papa?” In his agitation -the boy’s tricky palate betrayed him as it often did. “It’s big, dirty -_rie_!” - -Lincoln’s bony shoulders twitched upward, sagged with resignation. “Son, -if all the lies that have been printed about the Lincolns were piled up -in a heap, they’d reach near to the top of that monument out yonder.” - -Tad came to stand beside him and looked out of the half-finished shaft -that would some day honor Washington. Now it was only a beginning, lost -in a spidery web of scaffolding. - -“Be plenty tall,” he observed. “If Bob had all that money, would it -reach to the top, Papa? He could buy everything he wanted, couldn’t he? -Horses and carriages and gold watches and everything. Can’t you put -people in jail for telling such lies? You’re the president.” - -Lincoln stood still, looking down on the trampled mall where a herd of -cattle pastured, beef animals gathered to feed the Army of the Potomac. -His eyes took on the faraway inscrutable look that so often baffled his -intimates and infuriated his enemies; the look that lost itself on the -horizon of a great land torn by hate and drenched in an anguish of blood -and fire. Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, had deepened that hurt in -his eyes and cut new lines about his mouth and brooding brows. Three -years of war, and in the nation there seethed a dozen angry factions. -Copperheads, only by a miracle defeated in Ohio; furious mobs resisting -conscription in the cities; even in the Congress, oppositionists, -critics, outright enemies. - -Only a few weeks since, he had stood facing that raw November wind on -the Gettysburg hill, speaking that little piece that now he was -embarrassed to remember, the speech that the papers had dismissed as -insignificant, dedicating the ground where slept more than sixty -thousand Union and Confederate dead. The dull ache in Abraham Lincoln’s -heart turned bitter as he thought of his own son, who should be in -uniform and who was growing restless and unhappy at being the one young -man of army age who was not permitted to fight for his country. Yet he -dared not let Robert enlist. The President’s son would be a prime -hostage should he be captured, and used no doubt to wring concessions -from his father. - -“Let’s go show Mama the watch.” He shook off his dismal musings and -scrubbed Tad’s brown head with the flat of his palm, straightening the -collar of the uniform that was Tad’s pride and glory. - -Tad looked up confidingly. “You know what Mama is worrying about, Papa? -She owes an awful lot of money in New York. She’s afraid you’ll find it -out. She said on the train when we came home that I mustn’t tell you all -the things she bought because you had troubles enough to kill three -men.” - -Lincoln hunched a shoulder, stretching his lips into a dry smile. “See -how my back is breaking down, Tad? That’s General Rosecrans. And this -side is General McClellan and General Meade made it worse when he let -Lee get away across the river.” - -“You cried then, I remember. Men don’t cry.” - -Strong men had wept enough tears to put the Potomac in flood these last -years, Lincoln was thinking. “When will it end?” he said aloud, with a -groan. John Hay, his faithful secretary, looked up quickly from his desk -in the outer room. - -“When we’ve killed all the Rebs, I reckon,” said Tad complacently. “But -if we killed ’em all I’d have a lot of uncles killed, wouldn’t I? I had -one killed at Chickamauga already, my uncle Helm.—He was a general,” he -told John Hay. - -“It’s happened in a good many families, Tad,” Hay said. “That’s because -we’re all Americans.” - -“Well, my mother was Southern to begin with,” declared Tad, “so I’m kind -of half Southern but I got over it.” - -“Southerners are good folks, son,” Lincoln admonished him. “Fine people -most of them. Just mistaken, that’s all—just mistaken.” - -“They fight good,” was Tad’s comment, as they went down the hall. - -Abraham Lincoln always stepped carefully and quietly in this big house. -He had never been at home in the White House. He always had a secret, -haunting feeling of guilt as though he were a guest and a strange, -uneasy, even an unworthy, guest. Mary, his wife, had no such -inhibitions. She loved to sweep down the wide stairway, her widely -flounced skirts moving elegantly over her hoops, her tight small bosom, -her round white arms and her round white chin held proudly and -complacently. All this was her due, her manner said, and her husband’s -humility and trick of effacing himself occasionally irked and angered -her. - -She was writing a letter at a desk when they entered her sitting room. -The intent creases in her brow softened as the boy ran to her. - -“Look Mama—look at Papa’s new solid gold watch! He got it for the -’Mancipation Proclamation.” - -Lincoln pulled out the watch, grinning boyishly. Mary’s eyes brightened -as she fingered the handsomely engraved case. - -“Why, it must be terribly expensive,” she approved. “What does Tad mean -about the Proclamation?” - -“I sent a copy to Chicago. They auctioned it off.” - -“For three thousand dollars,” added Tad. - -“My Heaven, you mean they got three thousand dollars just for that piece -of paper?” exclaimed Mary. - -“It was a pretty important paper, Mary, to a million or so poor black -people anyway. A copy would be a historic memento a hundred years from -now. Understand—” he fended off the small glint of avidity that so often -troubled him in Mary Lincoln’s pale gray eyes “—this was a charity -thing. For their fair out there in Chicago.” - -“You only made one copy?” She turned the watch in her small, plumb -fingers. - -He hedged uneasily sensing the trend of her thinking. “I made one or two -for old friends. No—” he raised a hand “—I’m not making any more, so put -that idea out of your mind.” - -She flared. “Why do you always accuse me of things I’m not even -thinking?” she cried angrily. - -“Maybe because I know you better than you know yourself, my dear,” he -said gently. “You were thinking that this is a nice watch but that three -thousand dollars is three thousand dollars.” - -“Well, it is a nice watch but it never cost that much money,” she -admitted grudgingly. - -“Mary, this watch was a prize. It was competition. Anybody else could -have won it, anybody who contributed more to their fair than I did.” He -took the watch from her hands and slid it back to his pocket. “Here—” he -handed her the old one—“put this away. You can give it to Bob when he -comes home. Run along now, Tad, I’ve got work to do.” - -Tad slipped out of the room a bit disconcerted. Mama ought not to have -got mad. She was trying not to get mad so often, his father assured him. -They had to help her, be careful not to provoke her. Tad skittered down -the long stairs almost colliding with a workman who carried a -stepladder, with a long wreath of greenery hung over his shoulder. - -“What’s that for?” the boy demanded. - -“For the Christmas receptions and things. Decorations. Don’t know how -I’ll get it hung. Can’t drive no nails in this wall. Hard as rock. Nails -just bends double.” - -“You could glue it,” suggested Tad helpfully. - -“Yah!” scorned the workman. “Get along out of my way, boy.” - -“My father is the President!” stated Tad, sternly, drawing himself up in -his uniform. - -“He is that, but you ain’t—nor no colonel either.” - -“I am so. I’m an honorary colonel.” - -“Call it ornery and I’ll agree. Now quit bothering me. I’ve got to -figure where to put up two Christmas trees.” - -“Two?” Tad’s eyes widened. - -“One down here and one up yonder—private, for you I reckon. So everybody -wants to get a favor out of your Pa can send you a present.” - -“All I want,” sighed Tad, backing off to watch the man ascend the -ladder, “is my nanny goat back.” - -“Your nanny goat has likely been made into stew by this time. You won’t -be driving a goat team through this house any more, busting up things -and ruinin’ the floors.” - -“I bet I get her back,” bragged Tad. “All Company K is helping me look -for her.” - -“Soldiers have got more important things to do than hunt goats,” stated -the man from his perch. “They got to find out who put that bullet -through your old man’s hat.” - -Tad was galvanized with excitement. “Hey! He never told me.” He tore -back up the stairs. - -Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, was just coming out of his father’s -office. Tad backed off and flattened himself against the wall. Mr. -Stanton was running the war; he was tall and grim with a long gray beard -but no mustache to soften a stern mouth, and his eyes could look very -hard and coldly at a boy through his round spectacles. Behind Stanton -marched Senator Sumner and Tad knew him too. Senator Sumner was always -mad about something and now, as he strode past the boy, Tad heard him -mutter angrily, “Amnesty! Amnesty! I’d give North Carolina amnesty at -the end of a rope!” - -Tad wriggled behind the visitor and slipped in before anyone closed the -door. He marched straight to the desk where John Hay was putting papers -in envelopes and licking the flaps. - -“Who shot a bullet through my father’s hat?” he demanded. - -Hay pressed down the flap with a fist. “Who told you that, Colonel -Thomas Lincoln?” he inquired with careful unconcern. - -“You never told me,” stormed Tad, “nor my father—nor Mama.” - -“Your mother doesn’t know about it. We hope she’ll never know. Also we -hope your father won’t ride alone out there at the Soldier’s Home any -more.” - -“Cavalry ride with him. With drawn sabers.” - -“Now they do. But he rode alone out there and somebody shot a bullet -through the top of his high silk hat. He doesn’t want his family or -anybody worried about it, so I wouldn’t mention it if I were you, -Colonel.” - -“I won’t.” Tad was flattered by being addressed as colonel, and he liked -his father’s grave secretary. He obeyed John Hay more readily than any -one else. “But I want to see the hat.” - -“We burned the hat. Too bad—it was a good eight-dollar hat.” Hay folded -another sheet after verifying the scrawled signature: _A. Lincoln_. “We -burned it by order of the President.” - -Tad looked a trifle shaken. He came close and leaned on the desk. “Why -do people want to kill my father, Mr. Hay? They do. I know. That’s why -we have Company K here in the house and all over the yard.” - -John Hay shook his head. “This is war, Tad. You could ask, why is there -a war? Why are there millions of people over there across the river -who’d liked to blow up this town and kill everybody in it? Everybody who -stands for the Union. Give me an answer to that and I’ll answer your -why. It’s a black cloud of hate, Colonel, smothering everything decent -in the country. Maybe it will lift some day. Meanwhile there’s not much -sense to it.” - -“Maybe some of those mean Secesh over there stole my nanny goat! I have -to go out and see if the boys have heard anything about her. She was a -nice goat. She liked me; she licked my fingers. She wouldn’t just run -off like Papa said.” - -“Maybe,” remarked Hay, “she went over to see why General Meade let Lee’s -army get away from him. Go hunt your goat and don’t bother your father. -He’s had people swarming in there for the last hour.” - -“All the women,” observed Tad, wise beyond his years, “have got a boy -they want to be a colonel or a captain. And all the men want to know why -Papa doesn’t take Richmond.” - -“Get on out of here, Tad, or I won’t give you any Christmas present.” - -“You know what I want,” stated Tad at the door. “My nanny goat back.” - - - - - 2 - - -The man in the armchair across the desk looked formidable and expensive. -Abraham Lincoln looked down at his own long, dusty, and wrinkled black -breeches and unconsciously gave a hitch to his sagging coat, to his -crooked black satin tie that had a perverse tendency to sidle around -under his ear. - -The visitor’s swallow-tailed coat was pressed and elegant; his shirt was -crisp with ruffles, his heavy watch chain held a jeweled seal. He rested -plump white hands, covered with yellow gloves, on the gold head of a -cane. His homely face was cold-eyed and stern. He had refused to state -his errand to the people in the outer office and Lincoln knew how -thoroughly they deplored his stubborn insistence on seeing as many who -called as possible. - -“Some day,” prophesied Nicolay gloomily, “you’re going to admit the man -with the little derringer hid inside a boot, Mr. President.” - -“With the fences down all around, Nicolay, why put a bar over the one -door,” Lincoln had argued calmly. “If they want to kill me they will -unless you bolt me inside an iron box. I’m the people’s hired man. They -put me here. I must listen to what they want to say.” - -But obviously the portly stranger in the flamboyant apparel had little -to say. He remarked about the weather, the unfinished Capitol dome, and -the trampled mall where army beef grazed. His chilly visage did not -soften or show animation or interest. Momentarily Lincoln expected him -to announce icily, as had happened before, “Mr. Lincoln, your wife owes -me a large account on which no payment has been made for some time.” - -If this visitor’s errand was financial he made no mention of it. He -stated that he was a friend of Secretary Seward and that he had attended -the Convention at which Lincoln had been nominated. - -“But I did not vote for you, sir,” he added. - -“Your privilege and right, sir.” Lincoln filled a little following -silence by pulling out the gold watch. “A gift I had today. From the -Chicago Fair. Sort of a Christmas gift, I guess you’d call it.” He felt -as young as Tad under those coldly scrutinizing eyes, and as naïve and -awkward. - -“Very fitting and well deserved, Mr. President. Now I must tell you that -I have no business here whatsoever. I merely came here to tell you that -I believe you are doing all for the good of the country that it is in -the power of man to do. And I want to say to you, Mr. President—go -ahead, do as you darned well please and I will support you.” - -Lincoln’s rare laughter whooped. He sprang up and pumped the hand of the -startled stranger. John Hay put an inquiring head in at the door. - -“This man,” chortled the President, “came here deliberately and on -purpose to tell me that I was running this country right—and all the -while I thought he’d come to tell me how to take Richmond. Sit down, -sir, sit down! I have not seen enough of you.” - -“My dear Mr. President,” protested the visitor, “are words of approval -so rare and exciting to the President of the United States?” - -“Rare?” Lincoln dropped back to his chair, his face collapsing into a -sudden, melancholy mask. “John, show this man that copy of the New York -_Herald_—the one where they call me a fiend and a disgrace to humanity -because I set human beings free from slavery.” - -“I destroyed it, Mr. President,” Hay said. “I was afraid that the -infamous thing might be seen by some of your family.” - -“Useless precaution, Johnny. I have a son in Boston, and I suspect that -he keeps his mother supplied with interesting clippings. My friend, if -to be the big boss of Hell is as tough as what I have to undergo here, I -can feel mighty sorry for Satan. Come along and have lunch with me, if -you will, sir. I reckon they’ve put the big pot in the little one by -this time. John, will you see if Mrs. Lincoln is ready for lunch?” - -“I believe Mrs. Lincoln went out, Mr. President. Mr. Nicolay ordered out -the carriage and the black team.” - -“And an escort?” - -“Oh, yes, sir—the lieutenant arranged an escort.” - -Mary would like that, Abraham Lincoln was thinking as they went down the -chilly stairs. Fires burned in all the rooms but the ceilings were high -and the walls cold and this was a bleak day with the lowering chill of -late December. A few snowflakes timidly rode down the icy air, but Mary -would wrap herself in rich furs, her round pink face nestled in a deep -collar, a stylish bonnet perched on her smooth dark hair. - -With white-gloved hands—smooth now, but once they had known a time of -rough domestic toil—she would wave brief salutes to the people in the -street. He hoped she wouldn’t be haughty about it. He knew her shyness -and uncertainty, her feeling of insecurity in a high place for which she -had had so little training, and that too often she hid this uncertainty -behind a too glib, too tart attitude of arrogance. To Abraham Lincoln’s -eyes, to his sensitive insight, it was like seeing a nervous little hen -strut and bridle surrounded by the cold angry eyes of foxes and the -sharp talons of hawks. There were, unhappily, too many people who -misunderstood Mary Todd Lincoln. - -Even John Hay had little sympathy for the President’s wife. There had -been a scrap of paper that Lincoln had found once, part of a letter Hay -had begun and discarded calling Mary a “Hellcat” and adding dryly that -she was lately more “hellcatical” than usual. - -Too bad Mary occasionally indulged in temper tantrums in the executive -offices. Her small explosions, her husband knew, were a form of relief -for the eternally seething doubts of herself that tormented her. She -adored her husband and the two boys that had been spared to them, but -this love was fiercely jealous and possessive and not always wise or -controlled. - -Christmas would be a sad time for Mary. Last year Willie had been here, -the gentle, quiet brown-haired boy who spent so many hours curled up in -a chair with a book. Willie had known every railroad line, every station -on every line. He had learned timetables by heart and drawn up schedules -of his own. It had been just such a raw, dreary day as this last -February when Willie had gone riding out on his pony. He had come home -soaked and chilled and the nightmare of those next days would haunt -Abraham Lincoln as long as he lived—Willie, burning with fever, babbling -incoherencies; Mary sobbing and moaning, pacing the floor, her hands in -taut, agonized fists, her smooth hair wild over her tear-streaked -cheeks; and that ghastly night of the White House ball, with the Marine -Band playing, he himself having to shake hands endlessly at the door of -the East Room while Willie fought for breath upstairs. - -After that, the end. The blue eyes closed and sunken, fading flowers -pressed by Mary into the small cold hands, senators, generals, foreign -ministers, pressing the numb hand of the President of the United States, -while upstairs on her bed Mary writhed and wailed in uncontrolled grief. - -Now Christmas would bring it all back. He was glad that Mary could -forget for a little while, shopping, buying gifts for Tad who had too -much already, who was in a fair way to be badly spoiled. - -Deeply, poignantly, Abraham Lincoln dreaded Christmas. All over the -land, north and south, would lie a load of sorrow like a grim hand -pressing the heart of America, the heart of this tall grave man in the -White House. He felt that burden as he walked into the small dining -room. Mary had not returned. Tad slid in late and was sent out again to -wash himself. The stranger waxed garrulous. - -“I understand, Mr. President, that you have a plan to widen the breach -between Governor Vance of North Carolina and Jefferson Davis, president -of this so-called Confederacy?” - -“That,” said Lincoln, “turned out not too well. Gilmore, of the New York -_Tribune_, wrote too much and prematurely. Those fellows across the -river got riled up and a Georgia regiment started a riot in Raleigh in -September and burned the Raleigh _Standard_. So the citizens of Raleigh -who didn’t have faith in Jeff Davis rose up and burned the Confederate -newspaper, the _State Journal_. That widened the breach and Vance has -already told Jeff Davis that he would welcome reunion with the Union -states and any peace compatible with honor.” - -He caught John Hay’s warning look then and said no more. He would not -reveal that his agents has just brought in a letter sent by the Governor -of North Carolina to Jefferson Davis—a bold and open plea for -negotiation with the enemy. - -“If North Carolina would make the break it would be a long step toward -peace,” said his guest. - -“It could also mean anarchy, outrages, and destruction in that state, -calling for more Union troops,” Hay reminded them. “So far we have -pushed back the borders of this rebellion, opened the Mississippi, and -our Navy has tightened the blockade of all the Southern ports.” - -“You will not, even under pressure, revoke the Emancipation -Proclamation, Mr. President?” The visitor was anxious. - -“I shall never revoke that Proclamation, sir.” - -When the meal ended and the guest had taken an obsequious departure, -Lincoln stopped at Hay’s desk. - -“What was that fellow sent here to find out, Johnny? Was he sent by -Sumner, you think, to put in a word against my idea of amnesty for any -Southern state that wants to come back into the Union? Sumner wants ’em -all hung down there and he has some powerful newspapers behind him. Some -of ’em are saying I’m having my salary raised to a hundred thousand -dollars a year, that I’m drawing it in gold while the Army gets paid in -greenbacks, and that I’ve cooked up a scheme to have Congress declare me -perpetual president for the rest of my life.” - -“Why do you let such fantastic rumors disturb you, Mr. Lincoln?” Hay -protested. “That New York _World_ editorial saying you’ve done a fine -job and that your death would only prolong the war has been reprinted -all over the country.” - -“If my death would end this war, John, I’d give my life gladly,” Lincoln -declared solemnly. “That would be a fine Christmas gift for this -country.” - - - - - 3 - - -The soldiers of Company K One Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania -Volunteers had become practically a part of the White House family. -Abraham Lincoln treated them as though they were his own sons, called -most of them by their first names, personally arranged for their passes -and furloughs. - -So when Mary Todd Lincoln had all her shopping purchases carried up to -the family sitting room and displayed, Lincoln’s face wore a sober look -of disappointment. Mary was tired and on edge but she excitedly showed -him, one after another, the toys she had bought for Tad, the gifts for -Robert, and a few items for members of the household staff. - -“Look, Abraham, this gun—it fires like a real cannon! With smoke.” - -“Nothing for the boys?” he asked, rubbing his long hands over his knees, -a characteristic nervous gesture. - -“Why, I’ve just showed you—the wallet and cuff buttons for Bob and all -these—” - -“I mean _my_ boys. The Company K boys.” - -Mary stared incredulously. “Good Heavens—you can’t give Christmas -presents to a whole company of soldiers! There must be a hundred of -them.” - -“I wish there were,” he said heavily. “I wish every company in our army -was full strength but unfortunately they’re far short in numbers. There -are less than forty of those boys and they’re far from home and -Christmas is a bad time to be homesick.” - -“They could be worse off,” she snapped. “They could be out there along -the Rappahannock or down in those marshes of Mississippi. Pennsylvania’s -not so far. Lord knows you’re always fixing up furloughs for them so -they can go home. Why, it would cost a fortune to give gifts to all that -company—and anyway, what can you give a soldier?” - -“Some warm socks might come in good. That ground’s frozen out there and -it’s likely to snow hard any day now.” - -“The commissary should keep them in socks.” She was testy as always in -the face of criticism. “Don’t I do enough—going out to those horrid -hospitals twice a week—carrying things—this house is practically -stripped of bed linen, all torn up for bandages.” She fluttered about -her purchases, flushed and breathless, her hands making little snatching -gestures, picking up things, putting them down again, twisting string -around her fingers. - -“Very noble of you, indeed,” he approved. “I’m proud of what you do but -I’m still thinking about Joe and Nate and those other boys. They curry -horses and clean harness and saddles; they look after Tad and his -goat—and of course they’re always on guard for fear I’ll get shot, -though I can’t figure any place where I could be where nobody could get -at me, unless they buried me.” - -“That man, that one-eyed man, you’re crazy to let him come here!” Mary -cried. “Mr. Nicolay says so.” - -“Gurowski? I know.” He smiled patiently. “If anybody does the Democrats -a favor by putting a bullet in my head it might very well be Gurowski. -He croaks that the country is marching to it’s tomb and that Seward and -McClellan and I are the gravediggers.” - -“They’ll be digging your grave if you don’t have a care for yourself!” -Her volatile mood had shifted; she was almost in tears. “That horrible -creature with those old green goggles, that silly red vest and that big -hat and cape—he looks like Satan himself, yet you listen to him!” - -“I’m his hired man, Mary,” Lincoln repeated. “The bald-headed old -buzzard is smart enough. He had a good job working under Horace Greeley -on the _Tribune_, but they had to let him go because he couldn’t -distinguish truth from slander. Then Seward put him in the State -Department as a translator but he published so many slurs about Seward -and me that they dismissed him from that job. He started as a -revolutionary in Europe; now he thinks he can save this nation. Maybe by -eliminating me. He’s written down now as a dangerous character. He won’t -be allowed in here again, so don’t worry.” - -Mary would never worry long, he knew. She was too mercurial, too easily -diverted by trifles. What troubled Lincoln most was her impulsive -inclination to meddle. She took a hand in decisions, was always writing -indiscreet letters to newspaper editors, discussing national affairs too -brashly; she interfered in decisions over post offices and appointments -to military academies. When New York papers printed long items about her -travels, her clothes, her bonnets and baggage, she was flattered and -excited, unaware that her husband was unhappily reading into some of -these accounts an amused note of criticism and contempt. She was as much -a child as Tad, he told himself often, but unlike Tad she could not be -controlled. - -All through the evening she busied herself happily over her gifts, -wrapping them in white paper, fetching bits of ribbon from her dozens of -bandboxes for bows and decorations. Abraham Lincoln slipped off his -elastic-sided shoes and stretched his bony feet to the fire. He dozed a -little and had to be warned sharply by Mary when his gray wool socks -began to smoke a little. - -“I declare, Abraham, you’d burn yourself to a cinder if I didn’t look -after you! You’ve even scorched your pantaloons. Yes, you have. I can -see where the broadcloth is singed on that right leg. It’s like putting -ribbons on a pig to try to dress you up decently. Sometimes I despair of -ever making you into a real gentleman!” - -Lincoln smacked absently at the hot fabric of his breeches. “In this -town, Mary, gentlemen are as thick as fleas in a dog pound. Take credit -for making me into a man but let the fashionable aspect go.” - -“People can’t see how much you know,” she argued. “All they see is how -you look. No wonder that New York paper called you a ‘pathetic, -disheveled figure’ when you made that speech at Gettysburg. I suppose -your cravat was crooked and your socks falling down.” - -“They’ve called me worse things. Names don’t stick unless your hide is -soft. I got toughened up back yonder.” - -“I notice you act kind of flattered when they call you a -railsplitter—and a yokel.” - -“Well, I know I was a good railsplitter. If they called me a sorry -railsplitter I’d resent it.” He was unperturbed. “What is a yokel? A -fellow from the country. So I must be a yokel for I sprung from about as -deep in the country as you can get air to breathe, so deep there wasn’t -even a road there, just an old trace that meandered up the bed of the -crick part of the way. America’s made of yokels. Our side, anyway. Your -friends down South have got a few stylish gentlemen but a lot of them -lost their sashes and their plumes up at Gettysburg and they got buried -right alongside the yokels. Humiliating to them, I reckon.” - -She had to laugh. “You’re hopeless, Abe Lincoln.” - -“Well, I know you’d admire me a heap more if I could go around like Jim -Buchanan. Long-tailed coat and white vest and my head cocked to one side -like a tom turkey admiring all the gals. He brought plenty of elegance -to this office but if he’d had a little yokel grit in his gizzard the -country wouldn’t be in this mess, maybe. One thing I know, you wouldn’t -want me sashaying around the gals like Buchanan. You’d spit fire if I -commenced that. Go on and fuss at me, Mary; it don’t bother me and I can -still lick salt off the top of your head.” - -She pulled the cord of the little toy cannon and aimed it at him. The -cork that was fired from it hit him in the stomach and he bent over, -pretending to be mortally wounded, uttering grotesque groans. She -clutched at him abruptly, holding both his arms. - -“Don’t do that!” she wailed. “It’s like my dream.” - -He put his arms around her, pressed her head against his chest. “You -having dreams again? I thought you’d quit that foolishness.” - -“I’ve had the same one, over and over. I can’t see you but I can hear -you groaning—like that. And I wake up in a cold sweat feeling something -warm on my hands—like blood!” she moaned shuddering. - -He patted her head soberly. “You eat too many cakes at parties. Too much -syllabub. Getting fat, too.” He pinched her playfully. “Me now, I’m one -of Pharaoh’s lean kine. More bones than a shad and they all poke out and -rattle. You should have married a pretty little feller, somebody like -Steve Douglas.” - -“I didn’t want him. I wanted you.” - -“Well, you got me, Mary, not anything extra of a bargain but I did set -you up so high you couldn’t go higher unless you got made queen of some -place. You’re a queen now, queen of a torn and divided country all -drowned in sorrow and hate and woe. But it won’t always be like that.—I -wish to the Lord I knew what to do about that little man, Ulysses S. -Grant! I reckon I’ll just have to give him command of the army.” He put -her gently aside, letting care return to possess him. - -“He may be a fine soldier but he’s a dirty, drunken little man,” sniffed -Mary, “and I don’t like his wife either.” - -“He fights better, dirty and drunk, than a lot of elegant fellers I’ve -got in commands. If he can win battles he can go dirty as a hog and it -won’t degrade him any in my estimation,” Lincoln declared. “As for his -wife, you’ve got a bad habit of not liking wives, Mary.” - -“That’s not true. I like some of their wives—when they’re not cold and -distant and look down their noses. It’s because I know how to buy pretty -clothes and my bonnets become me. I do look nice when I’m dressed up, -Abe Lincoln. And I know how to behave in company. After all there is a -little respect due to my position,” she stated, complacently. - -He gave her a comradely pat and went back to his chair and the stack of -papers he had put aside. “All right, Mama, you do the peacocking for -this office and I’ll try to win the war,” he said, withdrawing into that -remoteness that always baffled her. - - - - - 4 - - -Desperately she wanted to be liked and admired. She did not even know -that this desire tormented her like a hidden thorn. It was lost under -the surface imperiousness that she had put on defensively, as a child -might dress up in a trailing robe and play at being queen. She had no -talent for adjustment or reconciliation and her husband’s propensity for -seeing the best in people, even his bitterest enemies, puzzled and -irritated her. In her mind she put this down as weakness. When she -disliked anyone, it was done with vigor and she made no secret of it. -When she was displeased she let the whole world know, yet she could not -understand why it was that she felt always alone. - -The Christmas party at the White House had to be important, if not gay. -State Department people, Supreme Court people, senators, generals and -their wives, would not expect hilarity. Not with Lee’s menacing army so -near, the carnage of Chickamauga so recent, all the factional strife in -New York and Missouri and Ohio only temporarily lulled, and definitely, -Mary suspected, not defeated. - -She had two dresses spread out on her bed, and Elizabeth Heckley, the -mulatto seamstress, pinned bits of lace and ribbon bows here and there -over the voluminous folds of coral-colored satin and purple velvet. The -satin had wide bands of heavy embroidery touched with gold around the -skirt and the folds that draped low over the shoulders. Elizabeth -fastened a garland of roses at the bosom of that dress and let it trail -down the side of the skirt. - -“Needs a gold breastpin right there,” she indicated the fastening place -of the flowers. “What Mrs. President goin’ to wear on her head?” - -“A turban, Lizzie, of this same satin with some pale blue feathers in -front and the roses hanging down over my chignon. This dress will have -to be for the Christmas party and I know it’s too gay and likely I’ll be -criticized for putting off my mourning for poor little Willie. Good -gracious, down home where I was raised, I’d wear black for three solid -years for a child and for a husband it was forever. But I look awful in -black and I know it. It makes me dumpy and sallow and I do owe something -to the people. There’s too much crepe already in Washington. It -depresses people and hurts the war.” - -“This other one would look mighty fine on you, Mrs. President.” The -seamstress lovingly stroked the folds of violet velvet. “This dress look -like it was made for a queen.” There were bands of embroidery on this -gown too, but the embroidery was all gold cord and beads and there was a -light overskirt of draped tulle in shades of lilac, lavender, and -purple, caught up with little knots of gold leaves. - -A queen! Abraham had called her a queen. Mary could see herself trailing -a long robe of crimson with a border of gold and ermine. Too bad -democracies did not favor such ornate display by their rulers—but the -purple velvet did have a regal look. She would wear plumes in her -headdress, three of them in the three shades of the overskirt. - -“I’ll wear this at the New Years’ reception, though it is a pity to -waste anything so handsome on a company of just anybody. See about some -feathers and gold trimmings for my headdress, Lizzie, and plenty of -white gloves. Last year I ruined four pairs.” - -She must see to it that Abraham had plenty of gloves, too. He hated -them; he was always pulling them off and stuffing them untidily into a -pocket. He was always bursting them, too, and she kept spare pairs -handy. His hands had a tendency to swell from prolonged handshaking and -inevitably the buttons popped off or the seams split. A pair would be -soiled in half an hour too from all those hands, some calloused, some -grimy, some too hot and eager. - -The New Year’s reception was a great nuisance in Mary’s book—those -tramping feet scuffing the floors and the carpets and almost invariably -it snowed. And in spite of the vigilance of the guards she knew there -was danger. Lately danger had become a haunting oppression to Mary Todd -Lincoln. - -The election of 1864 was coming up and even in the Union states there -was radical opposition so bold it verged on treason, not to overlook the -vicious attacks of the newspapers to the South. On those pages Abraham -Lincoln was called everything from a degraded idiot to Mephistopheles -reincarnate. The South, as Southern-bred Mary Lincoln knew well, was -full of impetuous hotheads ready to dare or to do anything for their -sacred Cause. There was that O’Neale Greenhow woman, arrested right here -in sight of the White House—and even the Mayor of Washington temporarily -lodged in jail. And they said that people right in the Provost Office -had supplied the Greenhow woman with information that had brought on so -many Union defeats at Manassas and other battles. Mary remembered having -once met Rose O’Neale Greenhow at a tea somewhere. A handsome and -arrogant woman, too friendly with men. She was banished South of the -lines now, but women like that always had impetuous friends. - -“Get me out something plain, Lizzie,” she ordered now. “I have to shop -again this afternoon. The President thinks every soldier in Company K -must have a Christmas gift, and where I’ll find things the Lord only -knows! ‘Socks,’ he said, ‘Wool socks.’ I doubt if any can be found, and -they’d be two dollars a pair if there are any. Anyway, cakes and candy -and tobacco—and all those getting harder and harder to get. The crowds -in the streets are getting so rough, too, with all these soldiers coming -in.” - -“I could go, Mrs. Lincoln,” offered Elizabeth, “if you’d tell me what to -buy and give me an order to have it charged—and send somebody to help -carry.” - -“Would you, Lizzie?” Mary was eager with relief. “I’ll send you in a -carriage and a boy with you. I have to make a list. I think we’ll forget -the socks—there might not be any and anyway their mothers ought to knit -socks for them. We wouldn’t know sizes anyway.” Mary fluttered, hunting -pen and paper, sending a maid to order the carriage, getting out a heavy -cape of her own to keep the sewing woman warm. “You go down to the -market, Lizzie, away down on D Street. Things will be cheaper there. -There are thirty-three of those men. Just so each one had some little -remembrance the President will be satisfied.” - -She was grateful not to have to brave again the streets of Washington -that were becoming more horrible every day. Deep mud, which Army wagons -were churning up, caissons pounding by, cavalry splashing everybody, and -soldiers crowding everywhere. The shops were always crowded with the -impatient, pushing military and Negroes, and more colored people were -thronging into the capital every day, homeless and bewildered. Some of -the Negro men were being integrated into the Army but most were a -problem that the provosts and police were coping with in desperate -confusion. - -It all made for discomfort and danger. No real indignity had as yet been -offered to her personally since those grim days in New York in July, -when she had been hooted in the streets and followed into a shop by a -jeering mob of ruffians. Here in Washington her greatest cross was the -thinly veiled contempt of the women, formerly socially important, the -women the President called “those Secesh dames.” Very boldly they let it -be known that their sympathies were with the South. - -Washington, Mr. Seward said, and Mr. Stanton agreed with him, was a nest -of spies. In spite of imprisonment, grim guards, and ceaseless -precautions, messages still went through the lines to Robert E. Lee and -Jefferson Davis. It was said that Fontaine Maury, the Confederate -admiral, had a direct pipeline into the very heart of the Capitol. -Suspicion and distrust were rampant, and Mary harbored a constant, -nervous fear that either she or Tad might be kidnapped by the Rebels and -held as hostages. - -She had wondered sometimes in moments of private bitterness just how -much Abraham Lincoln would surrender to get his wife back, but Tad was -the key to his heart. Lately Company K had had orders to keep close -surveillance over the boy but Tad was quick and mobile as a flea. Less -than a month before he had been brought back, shouting protests and -struggling, from climbing the scaffolding of the half-finished -Washington Monument. - -She must go out and appear at the receptions and teas planned by wives -of officials, but with Christmas at hand now there would be a hiatus in -festivities until after the New Year reception at the White House. There -was that tiresome affair to plan for, then this Christmas party; it was -all hard work and expensive too, and that aspect practical Mary Lincoln -always considered seriously. She never saw an elaborate collation spread -without secretly adding up in her mind how many bonnets, bracelets, and -yards of silk could have been bought with the money. - -The Christmas tree in the private sitting room upstairs had been set up -and Tad put to work stringing popcorn and bits of bright metal for -decorations. A corporal had brought in a sackful of scraps of brass -discarded by a cartridge manufacturer and these Tad was tying to lengths -of his mother’s red wool. He insisted on doing all this in his father’s -office, stepped over by the endless streams of officials and callers, -and Mary found him there, squatting behind Lincoln’s desk, surrounded by -the litter of his festive preparations. - -She entered as usual without knocking, made a brief stiff bow to Noah -Brooks, the correspondent from the West Coast, and puckered her brows at -the small woman with curling grayish hair and unfashionable bonnet who -occupied the one comfortable chair in the room. - -The President unlimbered his long legs and jumped up, as did Brooks. - -“Come in, come in, my dear!” he greeted his wife. “You know Mr. -Brooks—and Mary, this is Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little woman -who wrote the book that started a big war.” - -Mrs. Stowe held out a gloved hand. “I am happy to be privileged to meet -Mrs. Lincoln.” - -“I read your book, Ma’am.” Mary was gracious. “I cried over it, some -parts—but part of it made me mad, too. My family owned slaves, Mrs. -Stowe, but they never did beat them or set dogs on them—never!” - -“One must emphasize the wrong sometimes, Mrs. Lincoln, to bring about -what is right,” said Mrs. Stowe. “Undoubtedly your family were Christian -people, and exceptional.” - -“Mama!” wailed Tad. “You’re standing on my yarn!” - -“I only came,” Mary was flustered, “to report to my husband that I have -arranged Christmas gifts for his soldiers—as he requested,” she added. - -“Sit here, Mrs. Lincoln,” Brooks offered his chair. - -“No—no, you have business here. Happy to have met you, Ma’am. You must -stay and have dinner with us.” Mary bowed again and hoped she had made a -graceful exit as became a queen. - -She wondered, as she went down the hall, why women with brains always -looked a little frumpy. That dress—homemade, probably, and it didn’t fit -anywhere! It was, she decided, safe to leave a woman of as few charms as -Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe in the office, especially chaperoned by Noah -Brooks. But Mary Lincoln knew well that if Mrs. Stowe had been young and -pretty she herself would never have walked out of that office. - - - - - 5 - - -The boy who jumped out of the dark shadow of the bushes slapped his -rifle hard, brought it to port sharply. - -“Mr. President,” he gasped, “if I had been an assassin you’d be dead by -now!” - -Abraham Lincoln stopped, shifted his high hat. A few thin flakes of snow -lay white against the silk. - -“And what would you have been doing, Joe, while an assassin was making a -corpse out of me?” he asked amiably. - -“I’d have done the best I could to protect you, Mr. President, but it’s -powerful dark out here,” stammered the flustered soldier. - -“I knew you were here, Joe, or I wouldn’t be out here,” Lincoln said. -“Cold out here. Have you got some warm gloves?” - -“Can’t handle a gun with gloves, Mr. President. But I get relieved in an -hour.” - -Lincoln looked at the sky. “Some mean weather making up, I’m afraid. Bad -for Christmas. You boys keeping warm in those tents?” - -“Well, the way I figure, sir, we’re just as warm as those men of General -Meade’s over across the river. And there ain’t nobody shooting at us, -sir—I mean, Mr. President. The lieutenant ain’t going to like it, Mr. -President, you walking out here alone. You want to walk, you need a -couple of us boys along.” - -“I make a good mark, don’t I, Joe? I sort of rear up on the skyline like -a steeple. Good thing it’s too dark for them to spot me. I look at it -this way. If the good Lord wants me to stay on this job He’ll look after -me. God and Company K. You see Tad anywhere?” - -“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Joe stalked beside the tall figure, weapon -alerted. “Tad’s down yonder to the corporal’s tent. He’s got his billy -goat down there. Some of the boys fixed up an army cap for that goat and -the corporal’s riveting a chin strap on it.” Joe trotted a little to -keep up with the long stride of Lincoln. - -“Better anchor it tight or the goat will eat his headgear,” remarked -Lincoln. “Mrs. Lincoln sent Tad to bed so she could fix up his Christmas -presents. Tad always sleeps with me but when I went to my room he wasn’t -there, so I decided he’d slipped down here.” - -“That goat sure means a lot to Tad, Mr. President. Tad treats him like -he was folks. Nobody ever has found out what happened to the she-goat, -sir. Last pass you give me I went all over that skinny town back yonder -where the trash and niggers live but I never seen a sign of any -goat—hide neither.” - -“Tad misses his brother. Christmas will be a sad time for all of us, but -we’ll try to make it happy for Tad.” - -“Just about a year ago you lost your boy, wasn’t it, Mr. President?” - -“Last February. Lung fever. He got wet and took a cold. Mrs. Lincoln -hasn’t gotten over it at all. She idolized her sons. We lost another -one, you know, in Springfield. Little Eddie. But we have company, Joe. A -great sorrowful company of people who have lost their sons.” - -Lincoln sighed heavily as he strode up to the lighted tent where a group -of men hunkered down around Tad and his goat. - -The corporal dropped his awl and leather and jumped up, eyes bulging. - -“Attention!” he barked. - -Every man sprang up to stand stiffly. Tad threw his arms around the -goat, yelling desperately. “Help me hold him! He’ll get away.” - -“At ease, boys,” Lincoln said “Grab that goat, some of you.” - -“Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir,” gulped the corporal. “Get him, Bullitt. -You, Joe—you’re on post!” - -“Joe,” Lincoln said, “has been escorting me and protecting me from -assassins, my orders. Very capably too. Tad, you’d better come along to -bed. Tomorrow is Christmas and your brother will be here on an early -train.” - -“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” The corporal flicked a salute importantly. -“Lieutenant detailed me and three of the boys to meet that train. We was -just helping the boy here to pretty up his goat, sir, asking your pardon -and meaning no offense.” - -“No offense taken, Corporal. I appreciate your taking care of my boys.” - -“Look, Papa,” shrilled Tad, “lookit Billy’s horns.” The animal’s rough -pointed horns had been painted a bright scarlet and tipped with circles -of brass. He shook them impatiently while Tad clung to his neck. - -“Mighty pretty,” approved his father, “but you’re getting paint on your -uniform jacket. Your mama will have something to say about that.” - -“She’ll have a duck fit,” stated Tad disrespectfully; then his voice -sank to a whimper. “Billy’s pretty but he’s not as pretty as a nanny -goat, Papa. I want my nanny goat back.” He began to cry thinly, and the -corporal looked anxious. - -“I sure wish we could get his nanny goat back, Mr. President. That paint -will dry by morning, sir. We’ll tie Billy out where he can’t rub it off -on anything. You, Bullitt and Gibson, escort the President and young Mr. -Lincoln back to the house, and lemme see them rifles first. Half the -time,” he explained unhappily, “they ain’t got no load ready and a man -might as well carry a broomstick. All right. About face, March!” - -Tad clung to his father’s hand and Lincoln felt his palm sticky with -undried paint. Behind them the goat blatted forlornly. - -“He wants me,” mourned Tad. “I feed him biscuits and all the boys have -got is hardtack.” - -“Maybe we can find some biscuits,” suggested Lincoln. “Mr. Bullitt and -Mr. Gibson can carry them back to him. Come along in, boys, and report -back to your corporal that I’m much obliged for everything.” - -He had never set foot in the White House kitchen. Now Abraham Lincoln -walked timidly there as though he were an intruder who might be ordered -out indignantly at any moment. - -The long room, still odorous with baking bread and roasting meat, was -warm, the huge ranges clinking as they cooled, water dripping from the -spout of a pump. The cooks’ white aprons and caps hung from pegs on the -wall and one long table was covered with trays spread over with white -cloths. Lincoln lifted a corner of a covering. Beneath was a great array -of small colored cakes obviously baked for the Christmas party. - -“Have one, boys.” He took a pink dainty himself and bit into it. “Pretty -good.” - -Tad wolfed down two and the privates nervously accepted one each. - -“Wonder where they keep the biscuits?” Tad began to explore. - -“You ought to know,” said his father. “You snoop everywhere.” - -Tad scurried about, opening ovens and cupboards, lifting lids of boxes -and the great copper pots. - -“Bread,” he uncovered a stack of loaves, “but no biscuits.” - -“Your billy will eat bread, sir,” suggested Private Bullitt. “He eats -hardtack. He’ll eat anything, Mr. President. He ate Sergeant Whipple’s -box from home. Had a cake in it. Et box and all, sir.” - -“Well have to see to it that Sergeant Whipple gets another cake.” -Lincoln took down a long knife from a rack on the wall and whacked off -the end of a loaf of fresh bread. “Good bread.” He tasted a crumb. “Go -good if we had some jam to put on it.” - -“There’s jampots up there, Papa.” Tad pointed to a high shelf. - -“So there are.” Lincoln reached a long arm, slit the paper that covered -the top of a jar, dipped in a knife. “Blackberry.” He sliced off a hunk -of bread, spread it thickly with jam, handed it to Private Bullitt. -“Have some, boys.” He spread another slice for Gibson and one for Tad -and himself. Perched on the edge of a table he ate, wiped his beard and -fingers on a handy towel, passed the towel around. “Some drizzled on -your jacket, Tad. Wipe it off. Now, I reckon somebody will get blamed -for this piece of larceny, so I’d better take care of that.” - -The cooks’ pad and pencil lay on a shelf and Lincoln tore off a sheet -and wrote rapidly: _All provisions missing from this kitchen -requisitioned by order of the undersigned. A. Lincoln._ - -“That will fix it. You boys take this bread back to that billy goat and -tell your sergeant I’ll see that he’s recompensed for his lost cake,” he -said. “Now Tad, you come along to bed.” - -The wreaths of greenery were in place in the hall and up the stairs, and -in the East Room a tall spruce tree awaited the lighting of the candles. -Festival! And out there on the cold ground boys like Robert, boys like -Tad would soon grow to be, kept warm in flimsy tents with little fires, -slept on straw with blankets far too thin, and there were men he knew in -the field, in grim military prisons, who likely had no blankets at all. - -The great bed in his room with its huge, soft bolster and tufted -counterpane, its enormous headboard shutting off drafts and elaborately -carved and scrolled, suddenly wore the aspect of sinful luxury. He would -gladly have taken a blanket and gone out to join his men, but he knew -sadly that that would not do. He had known the ground for a bed many -times—in the Black Hawk War and on expeditions into the wilds—but now he -was growing old and he had to uphold the dignity of high office. - -He pulled off Tad’s clothes, buttoned him into a long nightshirt, and -tucked him into the big bed. Almost instantly the boy was asleep. -Lincoln was struggling with his own boots when the door opened and Mary -came in, buttoned into a vast blue wrapper, a ruffled cap on her head. - -“Forevermore!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been? I looked for you to -help me with the Christmas things and couldn’t find a hair of you or Tad -either. Has that child been out in this cold wind?” - -“We were having a little Christmas party with some of the boys, Mary. -Tad’s all right. Don’t start scolding tonight; it’s already Christmas -morning now.” - -“You know how delicate he is. It will be just like Willie all over again -and I can’t bear any more sorrow, Abraham. I’ll lose my mind if I have -another grief to live through,” she cried. - -“Tad’s tough, Mama. Not frail like Willie. We were in the kitchen -anyway,” he evaded. “It was warm down there.” - -“You didn’t eat up my cakes?” she demanded. “I had trouble enough -getting them baked. The cook says the blockade is to blame for making -sugar so scarce and high. They ought to know we have to have sugar. -There’s no coconut either, nor nutmegs nor cinnamon.” - -“It’s war, Mary. Some good people haven’t even got bread,” he reminded -her. - -She began to whimper, perching on the edge of the bed. - -“Maybe I won’t need any cakes for my party. I’ve had at least a dozen -regrets already. An invitation from the wife of the President should be -like a command from the queen,” she declared, grimly. “I’m saving all -those insulting notes and I think the people who wrote them should be -properly dealt with.” - -Lincoln sighed as he hung up his coat and untied his lumpy satin cravat. -The starched collar rasped his neck. He was glad to be rid of it. “Don’t -you cry now for Christmas, Mary,” he pleaded. “We have to keep things -happy for the boys. Bob will be here in the morning.” - -She dried her eyes on the ruffle of her sleeve. “I can’t help -remembering that I’ve lost my son.” - -“You’re one of a vast company, Mary. If all the tears that will be shed -by bereaved mothers tomorrow were drained into one river we could float -a gunboat on it. If only I could see a way so there would be no more—no -more killing, no more graves, no more sorrowing women!” he cried, -desolately. - -It was a cry of anguish and Mary Lincoln felt a surge of terrible -compassion for this gaunt, lonely man who was her love. She put her arms -around him, standing on tiptoe, her cheek pressing the buttons of his -shirt. - -“You didn’t make this war. You’re doing all any man could do to end it!” -she cried. “We could have ignored the country—we could have stayed in -Springfield where nobody hated us. Here they all hate us. The ones who -come to our party tomorrow will smirk and fawn to our faces and then -sneer at our backs.” - -“Not all, Mary. There are plenty of good folks, loyal folks, who believe -I’m doing right. Plenty of people we can call our friends. A sight of -them voted for me, remember.” - -“They want something!” she argued. “Every last one of them wants -something. That General Grant is even being puffed up to run against you -for president next year. Even the Illinois newspapers are for him.” - -“Well, he might make a good president,” admitted Lincoln, “though no -soldier ever has made a good president since George Washington. And if -I’m beat, we can always go home to Springfield.” - -“Slink home like beaten dogs!” she exclaimed, her mercurial mood -shifting again. “Well, we’ll not do it. They’re not going to get us -down, Abraham Lincoln! Democrats nor Black Republicans either. And -they’d better show up at my party if they want any more favors from -you!” - -“You tear up those regrets, Mary,” he said soberly. “Tear up every -single one of ’em. And forget the names of the people who wrote them. -That,” he added very solemnly, “is an order from the President.” - - - - - 6 - - -Robert Todd Lincoln was a young man trying sincerely not to be a snob, -not to be blasé or obviously aware that his father was President of the -United States. A medium tall, erect lad, Robert’s dark hair was sleeked -down over a head rounded like his mother’s, but his long arms and still -growing legs and feet he had from his father. - -That long-tailed coat with braided collar was too old for Bob, Abraham -Lincoln was thinking. So was his manner too old, a boyish kind of -gravity that obviously he strove to keep from being condescending. His -mother fluttered about him adoringly as they sat at the family breakfast -table. She was continually straightening his cravat, feeling his brow -anxiously, smoothing his hair. Lincoln, shrewdly sensitive, could see -that his older son was a trifle annoyed by his mother’s solicitous -attentions. - -“Bob hasn’t got a fever, Mama,” he interposed cheerfully. “He’s the -healthiest human being I’ve seen in a long time. Why don’t we all go and -see what Tad got for Christmas?” He pushed back his chair. - -“Robert must get some sleep,” argued his mother. “He says he didn’t get -a wink on that train.” - -“The cars were cold and smelly and they were jammed with soldiers, all -of them cold and miserable,” stated Robert. “Most of them coming South -to join Pope’s army and all sulky because they had to be away from home -for Christmas. One chap sat with me—couldn’t have been any older than I -am and he had been home to Rhode Island to bury his wife. They all -talked and they were plenty bitter against the bounty boys—those fellows -who bought their way out of the draft for three hundred dollars.” - -“That was a compromise and an evil one, I fear,” said his father. -“Everything about war is evil. You can only contrive and pray for ways -to make it a little less evil.” - -Robert stood up. His face was very white. “Pa—and Mama—I told lies -coming down on that train. I told them I was coming home to enlist. I’ve -got to get into the Army—I’ve got to! Those men on that train, they were -dirty and shabby and some hadn’t shaved or washed in a long time, and -most of them were rough and some ignorant but every one of them was a -better man than I was! I could feel them looking at me—with contempt at -first. It was in every man’s mind that I was a bounty boy. A shirker. -Hiding behind a screen of cash! I was thankful nobody knew my name.” - -“You could have told them your name,” insisted his mother. “You could -have made them respect you as the son of the President.” - -“No, Mary—no, no!” protested Lincoln. “Bob couldn’t do that.” - -“I don’t know why not? Certainly your family are entitled to respect, -Abraham Lincoln!” - -“You don’t understand, Mama,” said Robert unhappily. “I was thankful I’d -been able to duck away from those soldiers Mr. Stanton had detailed in -New York. I didn’t want to be Robert Lincoln. I wanted to be nobody. -Then when I got off here in Washington, there was that escort! Troops to -guard me, as though I were a crown prince or something. A coward of a -prince!” - -“No, no!” Mary upset her cup in her agitation. “I still say you must -finish your education. You must graduate from Harvard. You’ll be much -more valuable to the country as an educated man than just another -private in the army. Even if your father gave you a commission—” - -“I don’t want a commission. Not if it has to be given to me,” Robert -cried. “I’d deserve all the contempt I saw in some of those men’s faces -if I took a commission I hadn’t earned.” - -Lincoln’s face relaxed in a slow smile. There were times when his older -son troubled him, but now a quiet pride warmed his spirit. But his heart -sank again when he saw the stony set of Mary’s mouth, the flush that -always heated her face when she was angry and determined to carry her -point. She would not change. Her attitude was the same as that with -which she had faced down General Sickles and Senator Harris not too long -ago. They had inquired, coldly, why Robert was not in the service. The -boy should, declared the General, have been in uniform long since. Mary -had talked them down then, firmly, just as she would talk down all -Robert’s arguments now. But it was a joy to Lincoln that Robert did have -pride and perhaps a mind of his own. - -Mary’s eyes were already glittering behind their pale lashes. Now the -shine was exasperation but in a moment, after her fashion, it would melt -into tears. Robert’s chin was jutting and his hands trembled on the back -of his chair. Lincoln interposed quickly trying to ease the tension, -gain a postponement of a crisis. - -“Let’s talk this over later,” he suggested. “Let’s not spoil Christmas -morning with an argument. Did Tad eat any breakfast, Mama?” - -“No, he didn’t.” Mary got her control back with a gusty breath. “He -wouldn’t even take time to drink his milk. He took it with him and -likely he’s upset the glass all over the carpet by this time.” - -“Well, let’s go and see what he found under the Christmas tree.” - -Robert followed them, silently, up the stairs to the sitting room, -strewn now with paper wrappings and a confusion of toys. Tad was -standing in the middle of the floor buckling on a wide military belt -trimmed with metal. Hanging from it was a small sword. Tad worked -awkwardly because his hands were lost in great white gauntlet gloves -that reached almost to his elbows. - -“From Mr. Stanton,” he grinned, patting the belt. “I thought he didn’t -like me. I thought he didn’t like boys.” - -“He likes being Secretary of War,” said Robert dryly. He reached for a -small package. “This is for you, Mama. The man said these things were -real jade from China.” - -Mary took the parcel eagerly, kissed Robert, undid the wrapping, -exclaimed over the necklace, pin, and earbobs. - -“Oh, Bob, they’re so pretty! I can wear them with my green taffeta.” - -She was a child for trinkets, Lincoln was thinking indulgently. He was -glad that he had given her the big white muff. She would love carrying -it to parties and on their carriage drives, nestling her two little -round chins into the delicate fur. He thanked Robert for a pair of gold -cuff links and there was laughter when they discovered that his gift to -Robert had been an almost identical pair. - -“At least,” said Robert, “I shall have the distinction of imitating the -President of the United States.” - -“Well, they’ll fasten your shirt sleeves anyway,” drawled Lincoln. -“That’s all a man can ask of them.” - -Tad strutted around the room flourishing his sword. He gulped the last -of his milk hastily at his mother’s command, put on his uniform cap, and -swished a shine on the toes of his boots with his cuff. - -“Now I have to show these to the boys,” he announced. - -“But son,” protested his mother, “aren’t you going to play with all your -pretty toys? Look—this little cannon. It shoots!” - -“Yeh—shoots a cork!” Tad dismissed the weapon indifferently, “A ole -Rebel would sure laugh if you shot him with that. Papa, I want a real -gun. One with bullets in it.” - -“My Heaven, Tad, you’re too little to have a gun,” declared Mary. - -“If I had a gun I could ride with Papa and perteck him,” argued Tad. -“Then nobody would dare shoot holes in his hat.” - -Lincoln caught the startled look on Mary’s face, got his son hastily by -the elbow. “Come along, Tad. Go show off your finery. And I’ve got work -to do.” He hustled the boy down the hall. “Who told you somebody shot a -hole in my hat?” he demanded, when they were out of earshot. - -Tad grinned. “Oh, I get information,” he said blandly, “but if I had -been along with a good ole gun nobody would have dared do it.” - -“Don’t mention it again in front of your mother, you hear?” Lincoln -seldom spoke sharply to the boy and Tad looked scared briefly. - -“No, sir—no, sir, I won’t,” he stammered, his palate tripping him again. - -“Mind now! And get along with you!” His father gave him a little shove, -as he entered the office door. - -Even on a holiday he was not free from intrusion, of being faced with -the woeful problems of the people. A lad of about seventeen, in the -faded uniform of a private, was standing, twisting thin hands together, -his face scared and anxious. - -“Sit down, son,” ordered Lincoln, closing the door. “How did you get in -here and what did you want to see me about?” - -The boy dropped on the edge of a chair, twisted his legs about each -other nervously. - -“Nobody let me in, sir,” he stammered. “I just told the man downstairs -that I had to see the President and he searched me, and I didn’t have no -gun or nothing so he told me to come on up here and wait. And what I -wanted to see you about, Mr. President—I want to be a captain.” - -Lincoln’s long lips drew back and quirked up a little at one corner. “I -see. And what military organization did you want to be captain of?” - -“No organization, Mr. President, but I been a private in the Sixty-third -Ohio a long time, sir—” - -“How long a time?” - -“Four months, Mr. President.” - -“And you have a company organized, maybe, that you want me to make you -captain of?” - -“No, sir—I haven’t got any company organized. But I just want to be a -captain. My mother says I should be a captain. She told me to see you -about it.” - -Lincoln clasped his bony hands around a knee. “What’s your name, -soldier?” - -“Milo, sir. Milo Potter.” - -“Milo, did you ever hear the story about the farmer out in Illinois, -where I was raised? Well, this fellow he was a good farmer and a dutiful -son to his mother but he got up towards forty years old and he’d never -married a wife. So his mother fretted at him, said she was getting too -old to churn and milk and he ought to fetch a wife home to take some of -the work off of her. So this farmer, call him Jim, he goes down to the -church and hunts up the preacher. ‘Preacher’, says Jim ‘I got to get -married. Mammy says so.’ ‘All right, Jim,’ agrees the preacher, ‘I’ll be -proud to marry you. You go get your license and bring the woman here -with you and I’ll give you a real good marrying.’ ‘But I haven’t got any -woman, Preacher,’ Jim argues kind of dashed. ‘Well, you can’t get -married without a woman, Jim’, the preacher tells him. That’s your -problem, Milo. You want to be a captain and you haven’t got any -organization to captain. What made you think you could be a captain, -anyway?” - -“Well, Mr. President,” the boy flushed unhappily, “it was that captain -we got in B Company. That last battle—he made us retreat. And right -there in front of us there was a hole in that Rebel line I could have -drove four wagons through. There wasn’t no sense in that retreat, Mr. -President. All of us boys said so. All of us was mad. So I thought I can -be a better captain than that.” - -“Maybe you can, Milo. You go on back to B Company and be a good soldier -and likely you’ll make captain before this war is over.” - -“Mr. President, I can’t do it! I run off. They’ll put me in the -guardhouse!” - -Lincoln scratched his chin. “That was very unwise of you, soldier. But -you can’t dodge your military responsibility. I reckon you’ll just have -to go to the guardhouse. If you should try to hedge out of it you’d be -as poor a soldier as that captain of B Company you complain about. It -won’t be too bad. Good luck to you, son.” - -The boy said, “Thank you, sir,” and backed out, twisting his cap in his -hands. - -“Stand up straight, look the captain in the eye, and admit you ran off, -son,” advised Lincoln. “You needn’t tell him you came here to get his -job away from him.” - -“No, sir, I sure won’t.” - -John Hay came in when the young trooper had gone. “I shouldn’t have let -him in perhaps, Mr. President,” he explained, “but he said he had an -important message for you.” - -“It was important. To Milo Potter,” smiled Lincoln. “No harm done, -Johnny.” - -“Your son is waiting, sir. Shall I send him in?” - -“Must be Bob. Tad would have already been in.” - -Robert came in, took a chair, and folded his hands, his young mouth -sober. “I had to know, sir,” he began, “have they been making attempts -to kill you?” - -“Bob, there are several million people who think that the man who kills -me should wear a hero’s crown. And there are a lot of people who yearn -to be heroes,” Lincoln said calmly. - -“You should be better protected. You shouldn’t take risks!” - -“They’re trying to protect me now, Bob, till I can’t hardly draw my own -breath.” - -“That fellow who just went out. Did you even know him?” persisted the -boy. - -“He was harmless. I reckon Johnny even took his jackknife away from him. -I have to see ’em, son. I have to hear their story. That’s why they put -me here,” declared his father. - -“About the Army, Papa—I’m deadly serious.” - -“The trouble is, Bob, that your mother is deadly serious, too. She’s -lost two boys,” Lincoln reminded him. - -“So have other women.” - -“I know. Give her a little more time, Bob. Till the end of this year -anyway. The war isn’t going to end before New Years’ Day.” - -“I shan’t wait much longer, I promise you,” threatened Robert, standing -tall. - -“Just promise me to the end of this school year. Then we’ll talk about -it again.” - -“And you’ll talk to Mama? Make her see that it’s something I have to -do?” - -“I’ll talk to Mama,” agreed Abraham Lincoln. “I’ll do my best, son.” - -But when, he was thinking wearily after the boy had gone, had his best -ever been good enough to prevail against Mary’s ready tears? - - - - - 7 - - -“Bob,” Abraham Lincoln said, when he went back to the family rooms, “I -need some help. Your mother has very graciously provided some little -Christmas cheer for those boys out there of Company K. The things are -all here in this big box. I’ll need you to help pass ’em out.” - -He bent and shouldered the heavy box that Mary had packed with small, -paper-wrapped bundles. - -“Oh, Papa, let me call somebody! You shouldn’t carry that,” protested -Robert. - -“Little enough to do for those boys.” Lincoln bent under the burden. “It -will mean more to them if I fetch it to them personally.” - -“Ridiculous!” fumed Mary. “It’s beneath your dignity to lug that heavy -box.” - -“Put my hat on, Mary, and put it on tight so I won’t knock it off.” He -ignored her protest calmly. - -She jammed the high hat down over his rough hair, the bony knobs of his -head. “You—the President of the United States!” she exploded. “With a -house full of help and you lug that heavy thing!” - -“He who would be greatest among you, let him seek out the lowest place,” -quoted Lincoln, solemnly and a bit inaccurately. “Not near so heavy as a -good stout oak rail and I’ve shouldered many of them in my day. Come -along, Bob.” - -“At least let me help carry, sir,” argued Robert as they went down the -stairs. - -“Don’t touch it or you’ll get it unbalanced and spill all Company K’s -Christmas. Little enough, but I had John Hay fetch me a roll of -greenbacks. I’ll give every man a dollar. A dollar is a right -substantial present, Bob, when you’re marching and fighting for thirteen -dollars a month and what you can eat, when you get a chance to eat.” - -“I would do it gladly,” insisted Robert. “All I ask is a chance.” - -“I know, son. Maybe we can talk your mother around by spring. I did some -better in the Black Hawk War.” Lincoln went on, stepping heavily down -the outer steps and across the rutted yard. “They paid me eighty-five -dollars for ninety days fighting in that war but part of the time I -ranked a captain. We had to shoot hogs to eat, though, and then fight -the farmers that owned ’em. Swampy country, too. Like Grant’s army -fought over around Vicksburg.” - -“But you captured Black Hawk.” - -“The regular Army said they did that. I got put in the guardhouse for -two days for firing a pistol in camp and they made me carry a wooden -sword after that. Discipline. You couldn’t make any worse record in the -army, Bob, than your father did before you.” - -“You couldn’t call that a real war, Papa,” Robert said. - -“It was real enough to the men who got their scalps peeled off. I helped -bury twelve of them. Now, look at that lieutenant! Sending an escort up -here on the double and putting all those boys in line at attention, when -I just came out here on a friendly visit.” - -“Even Tad!” laughed Robert. “Even the confounded goat!” - -The goat wore his military hat and Tad was holding him grimly into line -by his horns. Lincoln let the two soldiers who came trotting up help him -ease the box down to the ground. - -“At ease, men,” he ordered. “This is old Father Christmas, not the -commander in chief. File by, one at a time, and get your Christmas -cheer.” - -Robert passed out the packages one by one while Lincoln stood thumbing -bills off a roll of money, stopping to wet his thumb occasionally, -saying, “Here, son, spend this on some foolishness next time you get a -pass into town.” - -There were yells of thanks and a lined-up cheer for the President, the -goat blatting an obligato. But Tad, who had straggled at the end of the -line and received nothing, glared down into the empty box, whimpering. - -“I’m a soldier. I didn’t get any present,” he complained. - -“You got plenty of presents at the house, Tad,” said his father. “You’ve -got candy there, too. Don’t you go bumming off these boys now. You have -more Christmas than any of them.” - -“But I want a soldier Christmas,” persisted Tad, “and I want my nanny -goat back!” - -“You’ve got a goat,” scolded Robert, “a blamed nuisance of a goat. -You’re getting so you even smell like him.” - -“He’s clean,” fumed Tad. “Joe washed him and curried him and the -corporal even put hair oil on his whiskers. Can I take Billy in the -house, Papa? Can I? I want him to have some candy.” - -“No, Tad, no more goats in the house. That’s your mother’s order. Last -time,” Lincoln explained to Robert, “Tad drove two of them, hitched to a -chair, right through the middle of one of your mother’s social shindigs. -Upset a couple of ladies and spilled claret punch on their dresses. -Disgraced the whole Lincoln family and busted some good crockery too.” - -“It’s cold out here! Billy’s cold.” Tad hung to his father’s coattail -but refused to let go the goat. “Billy will catch cold.” - -“Private Bullitt,” ordered Lincoln, “will you tie up this goat in a -sheltered place? Tad, you come along inside. You’ll get the sniffles and -your mother will scold all of us. Corporal, if you must provide escort -for this family to their door, line ’em up. We’re ready to march.” -Lincoln took a military stance, between two privates, who were very -rigid with importance. Tad pulled back till Robert gave him a gentle, -brotherly cuff. - -“You act more like a baby than a colonel,” he said. “If you want to cry, -hand over that sword. You’ll disgrace the army, bawling on the march.” - -“Let loose of me!” shrilled Tad, jerking away. Turning he ran pelting -back to the circle of tents, dove into one and vanished. - -“You’d better go after him, Bob,” worried the President. “Your Mama will -worry if he’s out in this cold too long.” - -“Yes, sir,” said Robert, unenthusiastically, “but If I may make a -suggestion, sir, that boy needs discipline. He’s getting out of hand.” - -“Yes, sir, I stand reproved, sir,” said Lincoln meekly. “Just fetch him -along in. I’ll wait here,” he told the escorting privates. “Stand at -ease.” - -“Mr. President, I hope Tad don’t run off again,” worried one soldier. -“We try not to take our eyes off him when he’s out here with us. Could -be some Rebel sympathizers hangin’ round that would think it was a smart -move to catch up Tad and hold him. Know you’d be mighty near be willing -to surrender Washington to get that boy back, your pardon, sir, for -speaking so bold.” - -Panic stiffened Abraham Lincoln’s long body. He broke into a long-legged -trot back toward the tents, the escort panting after him. Robert -emerged, pale-faced, from one tent and, with a dozen soldiers charging -after him, hurried into another. He came out again, his hands outspread, -helplessly. - -“He’s hiding somewhere, Papa,” he said. “We can’t find him.” - -“Spread out, men!” shouted the lieutenant. “Comb the area. Six of you -guard the President. Corporal Barnes, form a guard detail.” - -The corporal hustled Robert into the middle of the protecting group, who -faced outward bayonets alerted. Robert was angry and full of -expostulations. - -“I don’t have to be guarded like a prisoner,” he protested. “I want to -go and help search for Tad.” - -“Private Bullitt, here, has just made a rather startling suggestion, -Bob,” said Lincoln worriedly. “He thinks that if some Rebel sympathizer -should catch up Tad and hold him I might be pressured into surrendering -Washington to get the boy back. And it might be,” he added sadly, “that -I would be weak enough to do it!” - -“You never would! You couldn’t—with honor!” explained Robert. “But it -would be a mighty tough decision, sir. Is that,” he asked sharply, “why -you won’t let me go into the Army? For fear I might be captured and held -as a hostage to force some concessions out of you? I want to tell you, -sir, that if I can get into the Army—and no matter how I’m treated there -or what happens to me, I’ll be a United States soldier, Mr. Lincoln—you -can forget that I ever was your son.” - -“Very nobly said, son,” Lincoln patted his shoulder. “I’ll try to abide -by your decision if the occasion ever arises. But Tad is my son. A -little helpless boy. A boy I’m mighty fond of, and they know it!” - -“If I may speak plainly again, sir,” said Robert, “he needs his breeches -tanned. And you are the one who ought to do it.” - -“He couldn’t have gone far,” fretted Lincoln. “It’s beginning to snow -again.” He moved across the yard, his escort keeping rigidly in -formation on either side. “Tad!” he shouted. “You, Tad—come back here!” - -“He wanted to be a soldier, Mr. President,” put in one of the soldiers. -“Tad was bound he was a soldier.” - -“All my boys,” said Lincoln, “wanting to be soldiers!” - -There was a shout presently from beyond the fenced in confines of the -yard. Men started running. - -“They’ve seen him,” cried Robert relieved. “The ornery little devil!” He -began to run himself, and Lincoln trotted too, almost outstripping his -guards. - -“There he is!” exclaimed a soldier. “Up on that scaffolding again!” - -“They’re going after him. They’ll get him down.” Lincoln almost forgot -to breathe. The little figure looked so small against the loom of that -great half-finished monument—a tiny, struggling shape swarmed over by -half a dozen men in blue who clung precariously to the spidery trestles, -caught him and passed him down slowly, kicking and fighting, from one to -another. - -They brought him up in a few minutes, a pathetic, disheveled sight, -tear-stained, dragging his feet, still kicking at the shins of the men -who restrained him. His military cap was over one eye, his belt half -off, the toy sword dragging. - -“Fetch him here!” sternly ordered the President of the United States. - -Tad stumbled close, held tight by the elbows by two privates. His chin -was shaking, sobs shook him. - -“Oh, Papa—Oh, Papa—” he gasped, trying to fling himself at the tall man -with the suddenly grim and forbidding face. - -But Lincoln was unrelenting. “Thomas Lincoln! Give me that sword!” he -ordered in a terrible voice. - -Trembling Tad jerked the sword loose, handed it over. - -“Present the hilt, in proper military order!” snapped his father. - -Tad reversed the sword, his hand shaking so that almost it fell to the -ground. - -“Yes, sir!” His voice was very thin and small. - -Solemnly Lincoln broke the sword over his knee, tossed it to one side. - -“You are now reduced to the rank of private, Thomas Lincoln,” he stated, -“until such time as you can conduct yourself in the proper manner and -discipline of an officer of the Army of the United States. Strip off his -epaulets, Corporal.” - -The corporal obeyed, looking unhappy and ill at ease, handing the -gold-fringed boards into the hands of the commander in chief. - -“Private Thomas Lincoln, you will now escort the President of the United -States back to the White House,” ordered Abraham Lincoln. “Forward -march!” - -Every man of Company K fell in, marched in grave formation, eyes -straight ahead, chins set, weapons held ready, to the side door of the -house. Lincoln entered first, turned on the doorstep, and soberly -saluted the ranks. - -“My deepest gratitude, men of Company K,” he said, “for labor beyond the -call of duty.” - -Tad marched in stiffly; then, with a frightened look backward at this -stranger who had been his adored and indulgent father, flew through the -hall and up the stairs. His mother came hurrying out of the sitting room -but he ignored her, flying past her to the room with the great -high-topped bed. There Private Thomas Lincoln dived under the bed. - -When the dinner gong sounded, he refused to come out, even at his -father’s stern order. - -“All right,” dismissed Abraham Lincoln. “Since you’re such a craven and -a coward, Private Lincoln, you may remain in durance there. I can eat -two drumsticks.” - -Tad rolled out, swiftly, covered with dust and lint. - -“I am not a coward!” he sobbed. “I climbed most to the top of that silly -ole monument!” - -“You are still a disgrace to the uniform,” declared his father. “A -soldier who ran away. Now go and wash yourself before your mother comes -in here and scolds both of us.” - -“Yes, Papa dear!” whimpered Tad, hugging the long legs and snuffling. -“And you can have both drumsticks.” - - - - - 8 - - -The Christmas party was in full swing. Abraham Lincoln had shaken hands -till his knuckles ached. Mary Todd Lincoln’s coral-colored satin and -turbaned headdress with jaunty flowers and feathers had swished and -bowed and rustled, and her round face was all aglow with pleasure and -excitement. She was always vivacious at parties, and, if at times she -was a bit too garrulous, Lincoln overlooked that indulgently. He had not -given Mary much of happiness, and she had had her share of frustration -and sorrow. Now, if she could find pleasure in the dull round of an -official affair, he was content. - -Some of the senators and other officials had had a few too many parties -already. One judge was already asleep on a padded sofa in the hall, his -gaited ankles sprawling, his mouth open. The musicians from the Marine -Band played on doggedly and quietly in the screened corner of the East -Room. Here and there stood men of Company K and White House guards, -stony-faced, rigidly alerted. Abraham Lincoln felt his legs begin to sag -a bit under him, found himself wishing wearily that this company would -all go home. But at least Mary was enjoying herself. - -It was nearly midnight when an aide came through the crowd, and touched -the arm of the President. - -“Some men of Company K at the rear door, Mr. President,” he said in a -low voice. “They insist on seeing you. An officer is with them. They say -they have brought a Christmas present for your son, Thomas.” - -Lincoln looked about him. Mary was the animated center of a group. -Servants were collecting empty glasses and picking up shattered remnants -of flowers from the carpet. Secretary Seward stood in the midst of a -dozen men who were arguing a trifle too loudly the question of amnesty -for North Carolina. The band was playing slowly, with a few sour notes -indicating that the musicians were wearying after five hours of patient -tootling. - -“Dismiss those Marine players,” ordered Lincoln. “They’re tired. I’ll -see what those boys at the back door want.” - -“Not alone, Mr. President!” protested the aide. - -“Company K won’t let anything happen to me,” argued Lincoln. “How many -are out there?” - -“Quite a number, sir. A lieutenant is with them.” - -“I’ll fetch Tad. If they’ve brought something for him it will sort of -make up for this sorry Christmas he had.” Lincoln strode off up the -stairs. All day since disciplining Tad his heart had ached in dull, -heavy fashion. It was not easy, he was thinking, to be the son of a -president. It was not even easy to be a president. He thought again -wistfully of that white house in Springfield, of turkey wishbones hung -to dry there above the kitchen stove when Tad and Willie were small. -Honors came dear. Almost, he decided, a man could pay too much for them. - -Tad was still awake, lying hunched down in the middle of the huge, high -bed. A candle burned on a stand, and the flickering light made his eyes -enormous and somehow lost in the round paleness of his face. - -“I couldn’t get to sleep, Papa,” he explained, scrabbling into his -father’s lap when Lincoln sat on the edge of the bed. “It was the drum. -I could hear it all the time—bum, bum. When it stopped I waited for it -to start again.” - -“It’s stopped now, Tad. For good. And the boys are downstairs. Our boys. -They brought you something. Come on, I’ll carry you down. Put this -wrapper around you so you won’t take cold.” - -“Maybe a new sword. Would you let me wear it, Papa?” asked Tad eagerly. - -“I’ll see—we’ll see how you behave.” - -They went down the rear stairway stealthily, through a chilly hall to -the back door. But even here was an aide who sprang to open the door and -two soldiers appeared out of nowhere, one desperately swallowing some -thing he had been chewing on. - -On the steps outside huddled a crowd of blue-clad men. Snow sifted -thinly over their bent shoulders, their drawn-down caps. Every face came -up, but to a man they seemed to be holding something, holding tight to a -bulk that struggled a little, something that was hairy and odorous and -staccato of feet and alive. - -“Mr. President,” the lieutenant jerked erect, saluted anxiously, “we -brought this—for Private Thomas Lincoln—for his Christmas, sir. It’s not -the same one. Some of the boys chipped in and bought it off a Negro, -sir—but we thought might be it would do—for the boy for his Christmas.” - -Like a fish Tad was out of his father’s arms, nightshirt flying, bare -feet oblivious of the cold stone step. - -“A nanny goat!” he shrieked in delight. “Papa, it’s a nanny goat! My -very own nanny goat!” - -“Mr. President, your pardon sir, it’s kind of dirty, sir, but we’ll wash -it good in the morning. And though it ain’t the same one,” pleaded the -corporal, “we thought maybe it would do—for Christmas.” - -“She licked my hand. She likes me!” Tad squirmed in ecstasy. “Most of -anything I wanted me a nanny goat!” - -“It appears,” stated Abraham Lincoln, “to be a very superior goat. Thank -the boys, Tad, and let them take your nanny down to the stables and feed -her. She looks a bit gaunt to me. See that she gets a good feed, -Corporal, if you please. Now, back to bed, Private Lincoln. Your nanny -will still be here, all cleaned up and beautiful for you, in the -morning.” - -Very reluctantly, with many farewell pats and hand lickings, Tad was at -last persuaded to mount the stairs again in his father’s arms. - -Down below, the drums had ceased but Abraham Lincoln thought wearily of -all the hands he must shake again before he could lie down to rest in -this wide bed. - -He tucked the covers tenderly over the happy child. Tad’s eyes were -starry. No more tears. All sadness forgotten. Wonderful, to be a child. -Abraham Lincoln sighed as he closed the door. - -“Papa!” called Tad. - -Lincoln opened the door again. “Yes, son.” - -“It’s the nicest Christmas I ever had!” stated young Thomas Lincoln. - - - - - Transcriber’s Notes - - -—Silently corrected a few typos. - -—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook - is public-domain in the country of publication. - -—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by - _underscores_. - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS FOR TAD *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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