gain strength in their beauty and fragrance,
and left the room.

In a few moments she had returned and was on her way with Elsie to the
White House.

It was a beautiful spring morning, this eleventh day of April, 1865. The
glorious sunshine, the shimmering green of the grass, the warm breezes,
and the shouts of victory mocked the mother's anguish.

At the White House gates they passed the blue sentry pacing silently back
and forth, who merely glanced at them with keen eyes and said nothing. In
the steady beat of his feet the mother could hear the tramp of soldiers
leading her boy to the place of death!

A great lump rose in her throat as she caught the first view of the
Executive Mansion gleaming white and silent and ghostlike among the
budding trees. The tall columns of the great facade, spotless as snow, the
spray of the fountain, the marble walls, pure, dazzling, and cold, seemed
to her the gateway to some great tomb in which her own dead and the dead
of all the people lay! To her the fair white palace, basking there in the
sunlight and budding grass, shrub, and tree, was the Judgment House of
Fate. She thought of all the weary feet that had climbed its fateful steps
in hope to return in despair, of its fierce dramas on which the lives of
millions had hung, and her heart grew sick.

A long line of people already stretched from the entrance under the
portico far out across the park, awaiting their turn to see the
President.

Mrs. Cameron placed her hand falteringly on Elsie's shoulder.

"Look, my dear, what a crowd already! Must we wait in line?"

"No, I can get you past the throng with my father's name."

"Will it be very difficult to reach the President?"

"No, it's very easy. Guards and sentinels annoy him. He frets until they
are removed. An assassin or maniac could kill him almost any hour of the
day or night. The doors are open at all hours, very late at night. I have
often walked up to the rooms of his secretaries as late as nine o'clock
without being challenged by a soul."

"What must I call him? Must I say 'Your Excellency?'"

"By no means--he hates titles and forms. You should say 'Mr. President' in
addressing him. But you will please him best if, in your sweet, homelike
way, you will just call him by his name. You can rely on his sympathy.
Read this letter of his to a widow. I brought it to show you."

She handed Mrs. Cameron a newspaper clipping on which was printed Mr.
Lincoln's letter to