Part 2

“‘No, sir,’ I says; ‘I ain’t, and it ain’t necessary. Mebbe it’s all right and fittin’ for them as wants post-offices to have appintments, but I reckon Mr. Lincoln’s old friends don’t need ’em, so you just trot along, Johnnie, and tell him Billy Brown’s here and see what he says.’ Well, he kind a flushed up and set his lips together, but he knowed me, and so he went off. In about two minutes the door popped open and out came Mr. Lincoln, his face all lit up. He saw me first thing, and he laid holt of me and just shook my hands fit to kill. ‘Billy,’ he says, ‘now I am glad to see you. Come right in. You’re goin’ to stay to supper with Mary and me.’

“Didn’t I know it? Think bein’ president would change him—not a mite. Well, he had a right smart lot of people to see, but soon as he was through we went out on the back stoop and set down and talked and talked. He asked me about pretty nigh everybody in Springfield. I just let loose and told him about the weddin’s and births and the funerals and the buildin’, and I guess there wan’t a yarn I’d heard in the three years and a half he’d been away that I didn’t spin for him. Laugh—you ought to a heard him laugh—just did my heart good, for I could see what they’d been doin’ to him. Always was a thin man, but, Lordy, he was thinner’n ever now, and his face was kind a drawn and gray—enough to make you cry.

“Well, we had supper and then talked some more, and about ten o’clock I started downtown. Wanted me to stay all night, but I says to myself, ‘Billy, don’t you overdo it. You’ve cheered him up, and you better light out and let him remember it when he’s tired.’ So I said, ‘Nope, Mr. Lincoln, can’t, goin’ back to Springfield to-morrow. Ma don’t like to have me away and my boy ain’t no great shakes keepin’ store.’ ‘Billy,’ he says, ‘what did you come down here for?’ ‘I come to see you, Mr. Lincoln.’ ‘But you ain’t asked me for anything, Billy. What is it? Out with it. Want a post-office?’ he said, gigglin’, for he knowed I didn’t. ‘No, Mr. Lincoln, just wanted to see _you_—felt kind a lonesome—been so long since I’d sen you, and I was afraid I’d forgit some of them yarns if I didn’t unload soon.’

“Well, sir, you ought to seen his face as he looked at me.

“‘Billy Brown,’ he says, slow-like, ‘do you mean to tell me you came all the way from Springfield, Illinois, just to have a _visit_ with _me_, that you don’t want an office for anybody, nor a pardon for anybody, that you ain’t got no complaints in your pockets, nor any advice up your sleeve?’

“‘Yes, sir,’ I says, ‘that’s about it, and I’ll be durned if I wouldn’t go to _Europe_ to see you, if I couldn’t do it no other way, Mr. Lincoln.’

“Well, sir, I never was so astonished in my life. He just grabbed my hand and shook it nearly off, and the tears just poured down his face, and he says, ‘Billy, you never’ll know what good you’ve done me. I’m homesick, Billy, just plumb homesick, and it seems as if this war never would be over. Many a night I can see the boys a-dyin’ on the fields and can hear their mothers cryin’ for ’em at home, and I can’t help ’em, Billy. I have to send them down there. We’ve got to save the Union, Billy, we’ve got to.’

“‘Course we have, Mr. Lincoln,’ I says, cheerful as I could, ‘course we have. Don’t you worry. It’s most over. You’re goin’ to be reëlected, and you and old Grant’s goin’ to finish this war mighty quick then. Just keep a stiff upper lip, Mr. Lincoln, and don’t forget them yarns I told you.’ And I started out. But seems as if he couldn’t let me go. ‘Wait a minute, Billy,’ he says, ‘till I get my hat and I’ll walk a piece with you.’ It was one of them still sweet-smellin’ summer nights with no end of stars and you ain’t no idee how pretty ’twas walkin’ down the road. There was white tents showin’ through the trees and every little way a tall soldier standin’ stock still, a gun at his side. Made me feel mighty curious and solemn. By-and-by we come out of the trees to a sightly place where you could look all over Washington—see the Potomac and clean into Virginia. There was a bench there and we set down and after a while Mr. Lincoln he begun to talk. Well, sir, you or nobody ever heard anything like it. Blamed if he didn’t tell me the whole thing—all about the war and the generals and Seward and Sumner and Congress and Greeley and the whole blamed lot. He just opened up his heart if I do say it. Seemed as if he’d come to a p’int where he must let out. I dunno how long we set there—must have been nigh morning, fer the stars begun to go out before he got up to go. ‘Good-by, Billy,’ he says, ‘you’re the first person I ever unloaded onto, and I hope you won’t think I’m a baby,’ and then we shook hands again, and I walked down to town and next day I come home.

“Tell you what he said? Nope, I can’t. Can’t talk about it somehow. Fact is, I never told anybody about what he said that night. Tried to tell ma onct, but she cried, so I give it up.

“Yes, that’s the last time I seen him—last time alive.

“Wan’t long after that things began to look better. War began to move right smart, and, soon as it did, there wan’t no use talkin’ about anybody else for President. I see that plain enough, and, just as I told him, he was reëlected, and him an’ Grant finished up the war in a hurry. I tell you it was a great day out here when we heard Lee had surrendered. ’Twas just like gettin’ converted to have the war over. Somehow the only thing I could think of was how glad Mr. Lincoln would be. Me and ma reckoned he’d come right out and make us a visit and get rested, and we began right off to make plans about the reception we’d give him—brass band—parade—speeches—fireworks—everything. Seems as if I couldn’t think about anything else. I was comin’ down to open the store one mornin’, and all the way down I was plannin’ how I’d decorate the windows and how I’d tie a flag on that old chair, when I see Hiram Jones comin’ toward me. He looked so old and all bent over I didn’t know what had happened. ‘Hiram,’ I says, ‘what’s the matter? Be you sick?’

“‘Billy,’ he says, and he couldn’t hardly say it, ‘Billy, they’ve killed Mr. Lincoln.’

“Well, I just turned cold all over, and then I flared up. ‘Hiram Jones,’ I says, ‘you’re lyin,’ you’re crazy. How dare you tell me that? It ain’t so.’

“‘Don’t Billy,’ he says, ‘don’t go on so. I ain’t lyin’. It’s so. He’ll never come back, Billy. He’s dead!’ And he fell to sobbin’ out loud right there in the street, and somehow I knew it was true.

“I come on down and opened the door. People must have paregoric and castor ile and liniment, no matter who dies; but I didn’t put up the shades. I just sat here and thought and thought and groaned and groaned. It seemed that day as if the country was plumb ruined and I didn’t care much. All I could think of was _him_. He wan’t goin’ to come back. He wouldn’t never sit here in that chair again. He was dead.

“For days and days ’twas awful here. Waitin’ and waitin’. Seemed as if that funeral never would end. I couldn’t bear to think of him bein’ dragged around the country and havin’ all that fuss made over him. He always hated fussin’ so. Still, I s’pose I’d been mad if they hadn’t done it. Seemed awful, though. I kind a felt that he belonged to us now, that they ought to bring him back and let us have him now they’d killed him.

“Of course they got here at last, and I must say it was pretty grand. All sorts of big bugs, Senators and Congressmen, and officers in grand uniforms and music and flags and crape. They certainly didn’t spare no pains givin’ him a funeral. Only we didn’t want ’em. We wanted to bury him ourselves, but they wouldn’t let us. I went over onct where they’d laid him out for folks to see. I reckon I won’t tell you about that. I ain’t never goin’ to get that out of my mind. I wisht a million times I’d never seen him lyin’ there black and changed—that I could only see him as he looked sayin’ ‘good-by’ to me up to the Soldiers’ Home in Washington that night.

“Ma and me didn’t go to the cemetery with ’em. I couldn’t stan’ it. Didn’t seem right to have sich goin’s on here at home where he belonged, for a man like him. But we go up often now, ma and me does, and talk about him. Blamed if it don’t seem sometimes as if he was right there—might step out any minute and say ‘Hello, Billy, any new stories?’

“Yes. I knowed Abraham Lincoln; knowed him well; and I tell you there wan’t never a better man made. Leastwise I don’t want to know a better one. He just suited _me_—Abraham Lincoln did.”

THE END

THE McCLURE PRESS, NEW YORK

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors. 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.