for such a song had its history, and one of deep and touching interest to me. One "little sad song" a simple ballad entitled "Twenty Years Ago"-was, above all others, his favorite. He had no special fondness for operatic music; he loved simple ballads and ditties, such as the common people sing, whether of the comic or pathetic kind; but no one in the list touched his great heart as did the song of "Twenty Years Ago." Many a time, in the old days of our familiar friendship on the Illinois circuit, and often at the White House when he and I were alone, have I seen him in tears while I was rendering, in my poor way, that homely melody. The late Judge David Davis, the Hon. Leonard Swett, and Judge Corydon Beckwith were equally partial to the same ballad. Often have I seen those great men overcome by the peculiar charm they seemed to find in the sentiment and melody of that simple song. The following verses seemed to affect Mr. Lincoln more deeply than any of the others :

"I've wandered to the village, Tom; I've sat beneath the tree Upon the schoolhouse play-ground, that sheltered you and me: But none were left to greet me, Tom, and few were left to know Who played with us upon the green, some twenty years ago.

"Near by the spring, upon the elm you know I cut your name, Your sweetheart's just beneath it, Tom; and you did mine the

same.

Some heartless wretch has peeled the bark, -—'t was dying sure but slow,

Just as she died whose name you cut, some twenty years ago.

"My lids have long been dry, Tom, but tears came to my eyes;
I thought of her I loved so well, those early broken ties:
I visited the old churchyard, and took some flowers to strew
Upon the graves of those we loved, some twenty years ago."

This is the song Mr. Lincoln called for, and the one I sang to him in the vicinity of Antietam. He was at the time weary and sad. As I well knew it would, the song only deepened his sadness. I then did what I had done many times before: I startled him from his melancholy by striking up a comic air, singing also a snatch from "Picayune Butler," which broke the spell of "the little sad song," and restored somewhat his accustomed easy humor. It was not the first time I had pushed hilarity

- simulated though it was - to an extreme for his sake. I had often recalled him from a pit of melancholy into which he was prone to descend, by a jest, a comic song, or a provoking sally of a startling kind; and Mr. Lincoln always thanked me afterward for my well-timed rudeness "of kind intent."

This reminds me of one or two little rhythmic shots I often fired at him in his melancholy moods, and it was a kind of nonsense that he always keenly relished. One was a parody on "Life on the Ocean Wave."

Mr. Lincoln would always laugh immoderately when I sang this jingling nonsense to him. It reminded him of the rude and often witty ballads that had amused him in his boyhood days. He was fond of negro melodies, and "The Blue-Tailed Fly" was a favorite. He often called for that buzzing ballad when we were alone, and he wanted to throw off the weight of public and private cares.

A comic song in the theatre always restored Mr. Lincoln's cheerful good-humor. But while he had a great fondness for witty and mirth-provoking ballads,

our grand old patriotic airs and songs of the tender and sentimental kind afforded him the deepest pleasure. "Ben Bolt" was one of his favorite ballads; so was "The Sword of Bunker Hill;" and he was always deeply moved by "The Lament of the Irish Emigrant," especially the following touching lines:

verse.

"I'm very lonely now, Mary,

For the poor make no new friends;
But, oh, they love the better still
The few our Father sends !
And you were all I had, Mary,
My blessing and my pride;
There's nothing left to care for now,

Since my poor Mary died."

Many examples can be given illustrative of this phase of Mr. Lincoln's character, the blending of the mirthful and the melancholy in his singular love of music and When he was seventeen years old, his sister was married. The festivities of the occasion were made memorable by a song entitled "Adam and Eve's Wedding Song," which many believed was composed by Mr. Lincoln himself. The conceits embodied in the verses were old before Mr. Lincoln was born; but there is some intrinsic as well as extrinsic evidence to show that the doggerel itself was his.

ADAM AND EVE'S WEDDING SONG.

When Adam was created, he dwelt in Eden's shade,
As Moses has recorded; and soon an Eve was made.
Ten thousand times ten thousand

Of creatures swarmed around

Before a bride was formed,

And yet no mate was found.

The Lord then was not willing

The man should be alone,
But caused a sleep upon him,

And took from him a bone.

And closed the flesh in that place of;
And then he took the same,
And of it made a woman,
And brought her to the man.

Then Adam he rejoiced
To see his loving bride,
A part of his own body,
The product of his side.

This woman was not taken
From Adam's feet, we see ;
So he must not abuse her,
The meaning seems to be.

This woman was not taken
From Adam's head, we know;
To show she must not rule him,
'Tis evidently so.

This woman she was taken

From under Adam's arm;

So she must be protected

From injuries and harm.

But the lines which Mr. Lincoln liked best of all, and which were repeated by him more often than any other,

were

"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"

Mr. Carpenter in his "Six Months at the White House gives them in full as follows:

"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.

"The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,

Be scattered around, and together be laid;

And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie.

"The infant a mother attended and loved;

The mother that infant's affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blest,
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.

"The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure, her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised,
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

"The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne,
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn,
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

"The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,

The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep,

The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

"The saint who enjoyed the communion of Heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

"So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed,
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

"For we are the same our fathers have been ;

We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, we view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.

"The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling,
But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.