g to the house, he determined to test the matter
again--and the result was the same as before. He distinctly saw the two
Lincolns--one living and the other dead.

He said nothing to his wife about this, she being, at that time, in
a nervous condition, and apprehensive that some accident would surely
befall her husband. She was particularly fearful that he might be the
victim of an assassin. Lincoln always made light of her fears, but yet
he was never easy in his mind afterwards.

To more thoroughly test the so-called "optical illusion," and prove,
beyond the shadow of a doubt, whether it was a mere fanciful creation of
the brain or a reflection upon the broad face of the mirror which might
be seen at any time, Lincoln made frequent experiments. Each and
every time the result was the same. He could not get away from the two
Lincolns--one living and the other dead.

Lincoln never saw this forbidding reflection while in the White House.
Time after time he placed a couch in front of a mirror at a distance
from the glass where he could view his entire length while lying down,
but the looking-glass in the Executive Mansion was faithful to its
trust, and only the living Lincoln was observable.

The late Ward Lamon, once a law partner of Lincoln, and Marshal of the
District of Columbia during his first administration, tells, in his
"Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," of the dreams the President had--all
foretelling death.

Lamon was Lincoln's most intimate friend, being, practically, his
bodyguard, and slept in the White House. In reference to Lincoln's
"death dreams," he says:

"How, it may be asked, could he make life tolerable, burdened as he was
with that portentous horror, which, though visionary, and of trifling
import in our eyes, was by his interpretation a premonition of impending
doom? I answer in a word: His sense of duty to his country; his belief
that 'the inevitable' is right; and his innate and irrepressible humor.

"But the most startling incident in the life of Mr. Lincoln was a dream
he had only a few days before his assassination. To him it was a thing
of deadly import, and certainly no vision was ever fashioned more
exactly like a dread reality. Coupled with other dreams, with the
mirror-scene and with other incidents, there was something about it so
amazingly real, so true to the actual tragedy which occurred soon after,
that more than mortal strength and wisdom would have been required to
let it pa