ed a way for her through the mass of people.
When she reached the car Mr. Lincoln stepped from the train, kissed her,
and showed her that he had taken her advice.

The Secretary who wrote about the President's desire to save the lives
of condemned soldiers tells us that "during the first year of the
administration the house was made lively by the games and pranks of Mr.
Lincoln's two younger children, William and Thomas. Robert the eldest
was away at Harvard, only coming home for short vacations. The two
little boys, aged eight and ten, with their western independence and
enterprise, kept the house in an uproar. They drove their tutor wild
with their good-natured disobedience. They organized a minstrel show in
the attic; they made acquaintance with the office-seekers and became
the hot champions of the distressed. William was, with all his boyish
frolic, a child of great promise, capable of close application and
study. He had a fancy for drawing up railway time-tables, and would
conduct an imaginary train from Chicago to New York with perfect
precision. He wrote childish verses, which sometimes attained the
unmerited honors of print. But this bright, gentle and studious child
sickened and died in February, 1862. His father was profoundly moved by
his death, though he gave no outward sign of his trouble, but kept about
his work, the same as ever. His bereaved heart seemed afterwards to pour
out its fulness on his youngest child. 'Tad' was a merry, warm-blooded,
kindly little boy, perfectly lawless, and full of odd fancies and
inventions, the 'chartered libertine' of the Executive Mansion." He ran
constantly in and out of his father's office, interrupting his gravest
labors. Mr. Lincoln was never too busy to hear him, or to answer his
bright, rapid, imperfect speech, for he was not able to speak plainly
until he was nearly grown. "He would perch upon his father's knee, and
sometimes even on his shoulder, while the most weighty conferences were
going on. Sometimes, escaping from the domestic authorities, he would
take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, dropping to sleep
at last on the floor, when the President would pick him up, and carry
him tenderly to bed."

The letters and even the telegrams Mr. Lincoln sent his wife had always
a message for or about Tad. One of them shows that his pets, like their
young master, were allowed great liberty. It was written when the family
was living at the Soldiers' Home, a