PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 163, 19 April 1872, Page 3

PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

" Clad in black, the ungainly looking President might be seen, after the hour had come for Visitors to be excluded, pacing to and fro past the windows of bis apartment, his hands behind him, his head bent forward upon his breast, lost in profound meditation, a picture of sorrow, care, and anxiety. The artist Carpenter, who enjoyed frequent opportunities of obs-ervinghim in his moments of retirement, says —' His was the saddest face in repose I ever knew. His eyes, of a bluish grey tint, always in deep shadow from the upper lids, whicb were unusually heavy, gave an expression remarkably expressive and tender, often inexpressibly sad. A peculiar dreaminess sometimes stole over his face * ! As is not unfrequently observed of Western men, there were mysterious traits of superstition in his character. A friend once enquiring the cause of a deep depression under which he seemed to be suffering:—' 1 have seen this evening again,' he replie.d, * what I once saw before on the evening of my nomination at Chicago. As I stood before a mirror, there were two images of myself—a bright one in front, and one that was very pallid standing behind. It completely unnerved me. The bright- one I know is my past, the pale cine my coming life.* And feeling that there is no armour against Destiny, he added—'l do not think I shall live to see the end of my term; I try to shake off the vision, but still it haunts me.' He began to receive threatening letters soon after his nomination.. He kept them by themselves, labelled '* Letters on Assassination.'. After his death, one was found amongst them connected with the plot which had succeeded. * I cannot help being in this way,' hesaid,.'my father was so before me.' He dreamt that he rode through an un-, frequented path to a strange house, the surroundings and furnishings of which were vividly impressed on his mind. At fireside there was sitting a woman whose features he distinctly saw.... She was engaged in paring an apple. The woman was to be bis wife. Though a strong-minded man, he could not shake off the vision. It haunted him incessantly, until it compelled him to go down the unfrequented way. He quietly opened the door of what he recognised to be the house, and saw at a glance that it was where he. had been in his dream ; there was a woman at the fireside engaged in paring an apple, and the rest of his dream carae to pass. * There will be bad news to night,' he said oil another occasion. 'Why, bow do you kno v that, Mr. President?' ' i dropped asleep, and saw in a dream what has often before been ths precursor of disaster: I saw a ship sailing very fast.' And that night bad hews came! Perhaps, in the opinion of the supercilious critic, these are idle stories, unworthy of the page of history. The materialist philosopher may say—' Had Lincoln taken the trouble to hold up a candle before .the mirror, he might have seen a dozen pale images,of it!': That is very true. But does • not history record that some of the greatest soldiers, statesmen, lawgivers^nien.who have left ineffaceable marks onrtne annals of the human race—have been influeuced by like delusions ?"—Dr. Draper's ' History of the Rebellion.' '