Lincoln, the unknown

120 •LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNIf T live I'm coming back some time, and then we'll goright on practising law as if nothing had ever happened."He lingered for a moment as if to take a last look at theold quarters, and then passed through the door into thenarrow hallway. I accompanied him downstairs. On theway he spoke of the unpleasant features surrounding thePresidential office. "I am sick of office-holding already,"he complained, "and I shudder when I think of the tasksthat are still ahead."Lincoln probably was worth about ten thousand dollars atthe time; but he was so short of cash then that he had toborrow money from his friends to pay for his trip to Washington.The Lincolns spent their last week in Springfield at theChenery House. The night before they left, their trunks andboxes were brought down to the hotel lobby and Lincoln himselfroped them. Then he asked the clerk for some of the hotelcards, turned them over, and wrote on the back: "A. Lincoln,Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C.," and tacked them onhis baggage.The next morning, at half-past seven, the dilapidated old busbacked up to the hotel, and Lincoln and his family got in andjolted away to the Wabash station, where a special train waswaiting to take them to Washington.It was dark and rainy, but the station platform was crowdedwith a thousand or fifteen hundred of his old neighbors. Theyformed a line and slowly filed by Lincoln, shaking his greatbony hand. Finally the ringing of the engine bell warned himthat it was time to go aboard. He entered his private car by thefront steps and a minute later appeared on the rear platform.He had not intended to make a speech. He had told the newspaperreporters that it would not be necessary for them to beat the station, as he would have nothing to say. However, ashe looked for the last time into the faces of his old neighbors, hefelt he must say something. The words he uttered that morningin the falling rain are not to be compared with those he spokeat Gettysburg, or placed beside the sublime spiritual masterpiecethat he pronounced on the occasion of his second inauguration.But this farewell speech is as beautiful as one ofthe Psalms of David, and it contains perhaps more of personalemotion and pathos than any other of Lincoln's addresses.