He hasn’t changed, either.  I believe that the great men don’t change.  Away with your Napoleons and your Marlboroughs and your Stuarts.  These are the days of simple men who command by force of character, as well as knowledge.  Thank God for the American!  I believe that he will change the world, and strip it of its vainglory and hypocrisy.

In the evening, as we were sitting around Hancock’s fire, an officer came in.

“Is Major Brice here?” he asked.  I jumped up.

“The President sends his compliments, Major, and wants to know if you would care to pay him a little visit.”

If I would care to pay him a little visit!  That officer had to hurry to keep up with the as I walked to the wharf.  He led me aboard the River Queen, and stopped at the door of the after-cabin.

Mr. Lincoln was sitting under the lamp, slouched down in his chair, in the position I remembered so well.  It was as if I had left him but yesterday.  He was whittling, and he had made some little toy for his son Tad, who ran out as I entered.

When he saw me, the President rose to his great height, a sombre, towering figure in black.  He wears a scraggly beard now.  But the sad smile, the kindly eyes in their dark caverns, the voice—­all were just the same.  I stopped when I looked upon the face.  It was sad and lined when I had known it, but now all the agony endured by the millions, North and South, seemed written on it.

“Don’t you remember me, Major?” he asked.

The wonder was that he had remembered me!  I took his big, bony hand, which reminded me of Judge Whipple’s.  Yes, it was just as if I had been with him always, and he were still the gaunt country lawyer.

“Yes, sir,” I said, “indeed I do.”

He looked at me with that queer expression of mirth he sometimes has.

“Are these Boston ways, Steve?” he asked.  “They’re tenacious.  I didn’t think that any man could travel so close to Sherman and keep ’em.”

“They’re unfortunate ways, sir,” I said, “if they lead you to misjudge me.”

He laid his hand on my shoulder, just as he had done at Freeport.

“I know you, Steve,” he said.  “I shuck an ear of corn before I buy it.  I’ve kept tab on you a little the last five years, and when I heard Sherman had sent a Major Brice up here, I sent for you.”

What I said was boyish.  “I tried very hard to get a glimpse of you to-day, Mr. Lincoln.  I wanted to see you again.”

He was plainly pleased.

“I’m glad to hear it, Steve,” he said.  “Then you haven’t joined the ranks of the grumblers?  You haven’t been one of those who would have liked to try running this country for a day or two, just to show me how to do it?”

“No, sir,” I said, laughing.

“Good!” he cried, slapping his knee.  “I didn’t think you were that kind, Steve.  Now sit down and tell me about this General of mine who wears seven-leagued boots.  What was it—­four hundred and twenty miles in fifty days?  How many navigable rivers did he step across?” He began to count on those long fingers of his.  “The Edisto, the Broad, the Catawba, the Pedee, and—?”