Adventure Magazine Cover — page 135: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The .End of the Road in the right. You know that I am no flat- terer. But I tell you, sir, from my inmost heart that you are the only man to lead the people, because you are the only man whose courage never fails. God knows how you manage it. I am of the bull-dog type and hold on because I do not know how to let go. Most of my work I do in utter hope- lessness. : ‘But you, sir, you never come within a mile of despair. The blacker the clouds get, the more confident you are that there is sunlight behind them. I carp and cavil at you, but I also take off my hat ‘to you, for you are by far the greatest of us.”’ Lincoln’s face broke into a slow smile, wach made the eyes seem curiously child- c. “YT thank you, my old friend,’ he said. “T don’t admit I have your courage, for I haven’t half of it, But if a man feels that he’s only a pipe for Omnipotence to sound through, he is not so apt to worry. Besides, these last weeks God has been very good to me and I’ve been given a kind of assurance. “T know the country will grumble a bit about my ways of doing things but will fol- low me in the end. I know that we shall win a clean victory. Jordan has been a hard road to travel, but I feel that in spite of all our frailties we’ll be dumped on the right side of that stream. After that : “After that,” said Stanton with soeme- thing like enthusiasm in his voice, “you'll be the first President of a truly united America, with a power and prestige the greatest since Washington.” Lincoln’s gaze had left the other’s face and was fixed on the blue dusk now gath- ering in the window. “T don’t know about that,’ he said. “When the war’s over I think I'll gg home.” IV it was Spring in Washington— about hali-past ten of the evening of the fourteenth of April—Good Friday— the first Easter-tide of peace. The streets had been illuminated for victory, and the gas jets were still blazing, while a young moon climbing the sky was dimming their murky yellow with its cold, pure light. Tenth Street was packed from end to end by asilent mob. Asa sponge cleans a slate so TWO years passed, and once again exhilaration had been wiped off their souls. On the porch of Ford’s Theater some gaudy posters advertised Tom Taylor’s comedy “Our American Cousin,” and the steps were littered with paper and orange- peel and torn fragments of women’s clothes, for the exit of the audience had been hasty. Lights still blazed in the building, for there was nobody to put them out. In front on the sidewalk was a cordon of soldiers. . Stanton elbowed his way through the throngs to the little house, Mr. Peterson’s, across the street. The messenger from the War Department had poured wild news into his ear—wholesale murder—everybody—the President—Seward—Grant. _Incredulous, he had hurried forth, and the sight of that huge, still crowd woke fear in him. The guards at Mr. Peterson’s door had recog- nized him, and he was admitted. . As he crossed the threshold he saw ominous, dark stains. A kitchen candle burned below the hat- rack in the narrow hall, and showed further stains on the oilcloth. From a room on the left hand came the sound of women weeping. The door of the room at the end of the passage was ajar. It was a bare little place, once perhaps the surgery of some doctor of small practise, but now a bedroom. A door gave at the farther side on a small veranda, and this and the one window were wide open. An oil lamp stood on a table by the bed and revealed a crowd of people. A man lay on the camp-bed, lying aslant, for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the en- trance, propped on an outjutting bolster. A man was leaving whom Stanton recog- nized as Doctor Stone, the Lincoln family physician. The doctor answered his un- spoken question. 3 “Dying,” he said. ‘Through the brain. The bullet is now below the left eye. He may live for a few hours—scarcely the night.” Stanton moved to the foot of the bed like one in a dream. He saw that Barnes, the surgeon-general, sat on a deal chair on the left side holding the dying man’s hand. Doctor Gurley, the minster, sat beside the bed. He noted Sumner and Welles and General Halleck and Governor Dennison, and back in the gloom the young Robert Lincoln. But he observed them only as he would have observed figures in a picture. Comicbhook (©