Part 5

Colonel Jacquess was inspired to act as he did without, at first, consulting any one. He conceived the idea of going to Richmond, interviewing the Confederate leaders, and so gaining some definite information that would eventually lead to peace, through victory, for the Union. His mission was a secret, known only to a limited circle, including the President, General Rosecrans, General Garfield (who later became President), and James R. Gilmore, the friend of Lincoln.

Mr. Gilmore, in his "Personal Recollections of Lincoln," devotes many pages to this peace mission, with all the details, from its inception by Colonel Jacquess to its final wonderful results.

General Garfield, writing to Mr. Gilmore from his military headquarters on June 17th, 1863, said:--

"Colonel Jacquess has gone on his peace mission. The President approved it, though, of course, he did not make it an official matter. There are some very curious facts relating to his mission which I hope to tell you some day. It will be sufficient for me to say that enough of the mysterious is in it to give me an almost superstitious feeling of faith, and certainly a great interest, in his work. He is most solemnly in earnest and has great confidence in his mission."

Colonel Jacquess succeeded in gaining a respectful hearing before the highest authorities at Richmond without being shot as a spy--more than one of his friends having predicted such a fate for him.

He returned to the North determined to await patiently for another opportunity to try again. In 1864, after conferring with Mr. Gilmore and the President, it was decided that a second mission should be set on foot, this time in company with his friend Gilmore, whom a special Providence had chosen to record all the incidents and events of that unprecedented undertaking.

On this occasion Colonel Jacquess learned all that he had hoped to learn, and more, from the lips of Jefferson Davis, President of the Southern Confederacy; and when Jacquess and Gilmore returned Lincoln requested Mr. Gilmore to prepare a detailed account of the astounding revelation for the _Atlantic Monthly_.

This vivid recital of the facts was published and it created a sensation from one end of the country to the other. It turned the tide in favour of Lincoln's election for a second term and saved the Union. This, in brief, was the work of Jacquess, the mystic, whose name to-day is only known to the more serious students of Lincoln's life and work. Had the President been less a practical mystic than he was he would have forbidden Colonel Jacquess to undertake a journey full of risks and peril, and one that ordinary business men would have called an insane adventure.

_Images and Dreams_

Noah Brooks, in his Life of Lincoln, gives the following account of a vision which the President described to him:--

"It was just after my nomination in 1860 when the news was coming thick and fast all day, and there had been a great Hurrah Boys, so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest and threw myself on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass, and looking in the glass I saw myself reflected, nearly at full length, but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before. Then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the thing melted away. I left, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it, nearly but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. Later in the day I told my wife about it, and a few days later I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came again. My wife thought that it was a sign that I was to be elected to a second term of office and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not live through the last term."

Not long after his second inauguration he said to a friend in Washington:--

"I have seen this evening what I saw on the evening of my nomination. As I stood before a mirror I saw two images of myself--a bright one in front and one that was pallid, standing behind. It completely unnerved me. The bright one I know is my past, the pale one my coming life. I do not think I shall live to see the end of my second term."

In his biography, Morgan relates a dream which Lincoln had. He thought he was in a vast assembly, and the people drew back to let him pass. Just then Lincoln heard some one say: "He is a common-looking fellow." Lincoln, in his dream, turned to the man and said: "Friend, the Lord prefers common-looking people; that is the reason He makes so many of them."

Shortly before Lincoln's assassination some friends were talking about certain dreams recorded in the Bible when the President said:

"About two days ago I retired very late. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me, but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. Before me was a catafalque on which was a form wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the catafalque; others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers. 'The President,' was the answer. 'He was killed by an assassin.' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream."

_The New Era_

The principles enunciated by Abraham Lincoln are abiding examples, not only for the English-speaking peoples but for the whole world.

Out of what seems universal confusion, tending towards chaos, there arises a new era. A material transformation had to occur before the uprising of the spiritual, and the truth is beginning to dawn in the minds of thousands that behind all material phenomena there dwells the divine idea. Before the gates of oblivion closed on civilisation we were plucked from the gulf in accordance with the Divine purpose.

Amidst the strife of contending factions the thunder of upheaval reverberates from continent to continent, heralding the close of a dispensation that has known the trials and triumphs of nearly two thousand years, from which is emerging the mystical dawn of a new day.

THE END

THE WORKS OF FRANCIS GRIERSON

THE HUMOUR OF THE UNDERMAN

_The London Evening News_:--"'The Humour of the Underman' is a classic. The work will rank among the great books of the century if only for the rarity and beauty of its literary expression."

_The London Telegraph_:--"In 'The Humour of the Underman' there is a delicacy, a skilfullness, an ease of manner, and a consummate sense of style. Here is the short epigrammatic way of putting things which is Emerson's way, but the successive sentences are less staccato than in the work of the Concord Sage; there is added to it something of the delicacy, the ease, the grace of the French."

THE INVINCIBLE ALLIANCE

_Austin Harrison, Editor of The English Review_:--"Mr. Grierson's essays are masterpieces of lucid expression and condensed though. In 'The Invincible Alliance' he puts his index finger on the weak places--on snobbery on politics, on music, on the clergy, on the English point of view, which is twenty years behind Continental thought.... We believe him to be absolutely right."

_Dr. Samuel P. Orth, Professor of Political Science at Cornell, in a page review of the book in the N. Y. Times_:--"In 'The Invincible Alliance' Mr. Grierson touches prophetic heights. His analytical gift is a sort of intellectual clairvoyance."

ILLUSIONS AND REALITIES OF THE WAR

_The New York Sun_:--"Mr. Grierson's volume on the war is the rarest book of the year."

_The Brooklyn Eagle_:--"A work of marvellous power."

_The Independent_:--"Keen observation, trenchant criticism, and a conciseness of style combine with unusual force in Mr. Grierson's latest volume on the great war."

_The Boston Transcript_:--"In 1913 Mr. Grierson wrote a volume of essays called 'The Invincible Alliance' in which he outlined very clearly the dangers which lay before the two great English-speaking nations. Re-reading these essays in the light of the last four years we can see that Mr. Grierson looked even more deeply into the future and that he predicted much which has come to pass since the war began."

_The Herald, Washington, D. C._:--"Since the publication of the 'The Invincible Alliance' nothing has appeared in book form to surpass the trenchant vigour and illuminating insight of 'Illusions and Realities of the War.'"

LA VIE ET LES HOMMES

_M. Sully Prudhomme, of the French Academy_:--"J'ai trouvé ces méditations pleines d'aperçus profonds et sagaces. J'ai été frappé de l'originalité puissante de la pensée de l'auteur."

MODERN MYSTICISM

_Maurice Maeterlinck_:--"This volume is full of thoughts of the very highest order. You have deliciously and profoundly surprised me. You have said so many things which I should like to have written myself."

_A. B. Walkley, dramatic critic of the London Times_:--"Modern Mysticism is an original and delectable book."

_The London Telegraph_:--"Mr. Grierson pierces to the heart of his theme with a keenness that is almost disconcerting. He illumines the most obscure situation by one of his sudden flashes of insight. The poise of his sentences has something of Gallic precision about it and it is not surprising that savants of contemporary French literature have praised his work with generous emphasis. Such an influence, working like leaven in the lump, cannot fail to make its presence appreciated."

THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS

_Arnold Bennett, in a long review_:--"'The Valley of Shadows' is a noble book.... Mr. Grierson's descriptions possess a detaching sentiment of beauty with absolute visual quality."

_The New York Times_:--"Perhaps at last, before oblivion closes over the ante-bellum days in Illinois, the laureate of the Lincoln Country has arrived. If there is another book in existence which deals so graphically and so faithfully with that period we do not know of it."

_The Literary Digest_:--"Grierson's description of Lincoln as he stood before Douglas at Alton, is more real, more lifelike, than any statue or picture, and will in future ages take rank with Balzac's description of Dante."

_Sir Owen Seaman (Editor of Punch)_:--"There are chapters in 'The Valley of Shadows' that haunt one afterward like remembered music."

THE CELTIC TEMPERAMENT

_Prof. William James_:--"I find this volume full of wisdom. The pages of 'Reflections' have found their mark in me."

_Maeterlinck_:--"'The Celtic Temperament' is one of the most subtle and substantial books that I know."

PARISIAN PORTRAITS

_The London Times_:--"The most remarkable feature of Mr. Grierson's 'Parisian Portraits' is their extraordinary clear and various detail; they are served up with truth undiluted by sentiment. His insight is sure and his choice of subject exclusive."

_Leon Bazalgette, in La Phalange, Paris_:--"In his 'Parisian Portraits' Francis Grierson gives us some chapters of his romantic and marvellous existence. He conquers us by a very rare quality of evoking and suggesting a spiritual atmosphere."

JOHN LANE COMPANY, NEW YORK JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, LONDON

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected.