few
days after his election to the presidency. His room was very near my
own. I sent in my card, and he greeted me with a characteristic grasp of
the hand, and his first sentence rather touched my soft spot when he
said: "I have kept up with you nearly every week in the _New York
Independent_." His voice had a clear, magnetic ring, and his heart
seemed to be in his voice. Three months afterwards I saw him again,
riding down Broadway, New York (thronged with a gazing multitude), on
his way to assume the presidency at Washington. He stood up in a
barouche holding on with his hand to the seat of the driver. His
towering figure was filled out by a long blue cloak, and a heavy cape
which he wore. On his bare head rose a thick mass of black hair--the
crown which nature gave to her king. His large, melancholy eyes had a
solemn, far-away look as if he discerned the toils and trials that
awaited him. The great patriot-President, moving slowly on toward the
conflict, the glory and the martyrdom, that were reserved for him, still
remains in my memory, as the most august and majestic figure that my
eyes have ever beheld. He never passed through New York again until he
was borne through tears and broken hearts on his last journey to his
Western tomb.

I did not see Lincoln again until two years afterwards, when I was in
Washington on duty for the Christian Commission. It was one of his
public levee nights, and as soon as I came up to him, his first words
were: "Doctor, I have not seen you since we met in the Tremont House in
Chicago." I mention this as an illustration of his marvelous memory; he
never forgot a face or a name or the slightest incident. My mother was
with me at the Smithsonian, and as she was extremely desirous to see the
President I took her over to the White House late on the following
afternoon. In those war times, when Washington was a camp, the White
House looked more like an army barracks than the Presidential mansion.
In the entrance hall that day were piles of express boxes, among which
was a little lad playing and tumbling them about. "Will you go and find
somebody to take our cards?" said my mother to the child. He ran off and
brought the Irishman, whose duty it was to receive callers at the door.
That was the same Irishman who, when the poor soldier's wife was going
in to plead for her husband's pardon of a capital offense he had
committed, said to her: "Be sure to take your baby in with you." When
she ca