“Alive! Alive!” exclaimed the President, starting to his feet; “surely you mock me.”

“No, my dear sir, believe me; Christ Himself declares it.”

Mr. Lincoln looked at him a moment, then, throwing his arms about the clergyman’s neck, and laying his head upon his shoulders, sobbed aloud, repeating “Alive? Alive?”

Dr. Vinton comforted him by the words of Christ, and for an hour laboured and prayed with him, closing the interview by telling the President: “I have a sermon upon this subject which I think might interest you.”

“Do send it to me as early as possible,” Mr. Lincoln replied. Dr. Vinton forwarded the sermon, and the sorrowing President read it over and over, and then had it copied that he might enjoy the reading of it yet more. A member of the family says:—“From that time Mr. Lincoln’s views in relation to spiritual things were changed.”

Mr. Lincoln was a devoted father, and his great love for his children appeared in the White House in its tender simplicity, as it did elsewhere. No matter what dignitaries were about him, paternal affection asserted itself without let or hindrance. The Hon. W.D. Kelley, of Philadelphia, says,—

“His intercourse with his family was as beautiful as that with his friends. I think that father never loved his children more fondly than he. The President never seemed grander in my sight than when, stealing upon him in the evening, I would find him with a book open before him, as he is represented in the popular photograph, with little Tad beside him. There were of course a great many curious books sent to him, and it seemed one of the special delights of his life to open those books at such an hour that his boy could stand beside him, and they could talk as he turned over the pages, the father thus giving to the son a portion of that care and attention of which he was ordinarily deprived by the duties of office pressing upon him.”

Mr. Carpenter writes:—“No matter who was with the President, or how intently he was absorbed, little Tad was always welcome. At the time of which I write he was eleven years old, and of course rapidly passing from childhood into youth. Suffering much from an infirmity of speech which developed in his infancy, he seemed on this account especially dear to his father. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and it was an impressive and affecting sight to me to see the burdened President lost for the time being in the affectionate parent, as he would take the little fellow in his arms, upon the withdrawal of visitors, and caress him with all the fondness of a mother for the babe upon her bosom!”

Several weeks after the death of Willie, Mr. Lincoln, with several members of his Cabinet, spent a few days at Fortress Monroe, watching military operations upon the Peninsula. He improved his spare time there in reading Shakespeare. One day he was reading “Hamlet,” when he called to his private secretary:—

“Come here, colonel: I want to read you a passage.” The colonel responded, when the President read the discussion on ambition between Hamlet and his courtiers, and the soliloquy, in which conscience debates of a future state. Then he read passages from “Macbeth,” and finally opened to the third act of “King John,” where Constance bewails her lost boy. Closing the book, and recalling the words,—

Mr. Lincoln said: “Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness that it was not a reality?—just so I dream of my boy Willie.” Overcome with emotion, he dropped his head on the table, and sobbed aloud.

Beautiful example of paternal love in the highest place of the land ! The millions of fathers over whom he ruled found in him a worthy father to imitate!