p recalling the day on which I had seen little
Willie lying in his coffin where the body of his father now lay. I
remembered how the President had wept over the pale beautiful face of
his gifted boy, and now the President himself was dead. The last time I
saw him he spoke kindly to me, but alas! the lips would never move
again. The light had faded from his eyes, and when the light went out
the soul went with it. What a noble soul was his--noble in all the noble
attributes of God! Never did I enter the solemn chamber of death with
such palpitating heart and trembling footsteps as I entered it that day.
No common mortal had died. The Moses of my people had fallen in the hour
of his triumph. Fame had woven her choicest chaplet for his brow. Though
the brow was cold and pale in death, the chaplet should not fade, for
God had studded it with the glory of the eternal stars.

When I entered the room, the members of the Cabinet and many
distinguished officers of the army were grouped around the body of their
fallen chief. They made room for me, and, approaching the body, I lifted
the white cloth from the white face of the man that I had worshipped as
an idol--looked upon as a demi-god. Notwithstanding the violence of the
death of the President, there was something beautiful as well as grandly
solemn in the expression of the placid face. There lurked the sweetness
and gentleness of childhood, and the stately grandeur of godlike
intellect. I gazed long at the face, and turned away with tears in my
eyes and a choking sensation in my throat. Ah! never was man so widely
mourned before. The whole world bowed their heads in grief when Abraham
Lincoln died.

Returning to Mrs. Lincoln's room, I found her in a new paroxysm of
grief. Robert was bending over his mother with tender affection, and
little Tad was crouched at the foot of the bed with a world of agony in
his young face. I shall never forget the scene--the wails of a broken
heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions, the wild,
tempestuous outbursts of grief from the soul. I bathed Mrs. Lincoln's
head with cold water, and soothed the terrible tornado as best I could.
Tad's grief at his father's death was as great as the grief of his
mother, but her terrible outbursts awed the boy into silence. Sometimes
he would throw his arms around her neck, and exclaim, between his broken
sobs, "Don't cry so, Mamma! don't cry, or you will make me cry, too! You
will break my heart.