we were waiting for you, he said, with his
chin down on his breast, "Gentlemen, something very extraordinary is
going to happen, and that very soon."' To which the Attorney-General had
observed, 'Something good, sir, I hope?' when the President answered
very gravely: 'I don't know; I don't know. But it will happen, and
shortly too!' As they were all impressed by his manner, the
Attorney-General took him up again: 'Have you received any information,
sir, not yet disclosed to us?' 'No,' answered the President: 'but I have
had a dream. And I have now had the same dream three times. Once, on the
night preceding the Battle of Bull Run. Once, on the night preceding'
such another (naming a battle also not favourable to the North). His
chin sank on his breast again, and he sat reflecting. 'Might one ask the
nature of this dream, sir?' said the Attorney-General. 'Well,' replied
the President, without lifting his head or changing his attitude, 'I am
on a great broad rolling river--and I am in a boat--and I drift--and I
drift!--But this is not business--' suddenly raising his face and
looking round the table as Mr. Stanton entered, 'let us proceed to
business, gentlemen.' Mr. Stanton and the Attorney-General said, as they
walked on together, it would be curious to notice whether anything
ensued on this; and they agreed to notice. He was shot that night."

On his birthday, the seventh of February, Dickens had his interview with
President Andrew Johnson. "This scrambling scribblement is resumed this
morning, because I have just seen the President: who had sent to me very
courteously asking me to make my own appointment. He is a man with a
remarkable face, indicating courage, watchfulness, and certainly
strength of purpose. It is a face of the Webster type, but without the
'bounce' of Webster's face. I would have picked him out anywhere as a
character of mark. Figure, rather stoutish for an American; a trifle
under the middle size; hands clasped in front of him; manner,
suppressed, guarded, anxious. Each of us looked at the other very
hard. . . . It was in his own cabinet that I saw him. As I came away,
Thornton drove up in a sleigh--turned out for a state occasion--to
deliver his credentials. There was to be a cabinet council at 12. The
room was very like a London club's ante-drawing room. On the walls, two
engravings only: one, of his own portrait; one, of Lincoln's. . . . In the
outer room was sitting a certain sunburnt General Bl