Lincoln, the unknown

188 •LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNof me. ... I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to thelight I have."Weary and despondent, he often stretched himself out on asofa, picked up a small Bible, and turned to Job for comfort:"Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee,and answer thou me."In the summer of 1864, Lincoln was a changed man, changedin mind and body from thephysical giant who had come offthe prairies of Illinois three years before. Year by year hislaughter had grown less frequent; the furrows in his face haddeepened; his shoulders had stooped; his cheeks were sunken;he suffered from chronic indigestion; his legs were always cold;he could hardly sleep; he wore habitually an expression ofanguish. He said to a friend: "I feel as though I shall never beglad again."When Augustus Saint-Gaudens saw a life-mask of Lincolnthat had been made in the spring of 1865, the famous sculptorthought that it was a death-mask, insisted that it must be, foralready the marks of death were upon hisface.Carpenter, the artist who lived at the White House formonths while he was painting the scene of the EmancipationProclamation, wrote:During the first week of the battle of the Wilderness,the President scarcely slept at all. Passing through the mainhall of the domestic apartment on one of those days, I methim, clad in a long morning wrapper, pacing back andforth, his hands behind him, great black rings under hiseyes, his head bent forward upon his breast—the pictureof sorrow and care and anxiety. . . . There were whole dayswhen I could scarcely look into his furrowed face withoutweeping.Callers found him collapsed in his chair, so exhausted thathe did not look up or speak when they first addressed him."I sometimes fancy," he declared, "that every one of thethrong that comes to see me daily darts at me with thumb andfinger and picks out his piece of my vitality and carries itaway."He told Mrs. Stowe, the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," thathe would never live to see peace.