Lincoln, the unknown

LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN • 145when the little fellow passed away, his father, choking withsobs, cried:"My poor boy! My poor boy! He was too good for thisearth. God has called him home. It is hard, hard to have himdie."Mrs. Keckley, who was in the room at the time, says:He buried his head in his hands, and his tall frame wasconvulsed with emotion. . . . The pale face of her dead boythrew Mrs. Lincoln into convulsions. She was so completelyoverwhelmed with sorrow she did not attend thefuneral.After Willie's death Mrs. Lincoln could not bear to lookupon his picture. Mrs. Keckley tells us:She could not bear the sight of anything he loved, noteven a flower. Costly bouquets were presented to her, butshe turned from them with a shudder, and either placedthem in a room where she could not see them, or threwthem out of the window. She gave away all of Willie's toys. . . and, after his death, she never again crossed thethreshold of the Guests' Room in which he died or theGreen Room in which he was embalmed.In a frenzy of grief Mrs. Lincoln called in a so-called spiritualistwho masqueraded under the title of "Lord Colchester."This unmitigated impostor was exposed later and ordered outof town under a threat of imprisonment. But Mrs. Lincoln, inher distress, received "Lord Colchester" in the White House;and there, in a darkened room, she was persuaded that thescratching on the wainscoting, the tapping on the wall, and therapping of the table, were loving messages from her lost boy.She wept as she received them.Lincoln, prostrate with grief, sank into a listless despair. Hecould hardly discharge his public duties. Letters, telegrams layon his desk unanswered. His physician feared that he mightnever rally, that he might succumb entirely to his desolation.The President would sometimes sit and read aloud for hours,with only his secretary or his aide for an audience. Generallyit was Shakspere he read. One day he was reading "King John"to his aide, and when he came to the passage in which Constancebewails her lost boy, Lincoln closed the book, and repeatedthese words from memorv: