Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

34

MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

conference in which it was not my fortune to participate.
Nor can I say if Uncle Henry's errand to Washington had
results beneficial to the Union wounded.
Hundreds of representations, graphic and plastic, I
have seen since then, depicting Abraham Lincoln in almost every conceivable pose of body and almost every
imaginable mood of soul. The print from that instantaneous exposure, however, has never faded. Whenever I
think of the greatest American, it is first as an extremely
tall man with a sad, surprised countenance, seated at
breakfast, with beans half-way between starting-point
and destination.
II
Both before and after he became assistant secretary of
war under Stanton, Mr. Dana saw much of Lincoln in
the White House; he told me at different times many
stories of the President. Two of these, as contained in a
magazine article in 1894, I venture to introduce here,
without apology for the repetition or the digression.
Soon after Lincoln's inauguration in March, 1861,
Dana accompanied a party of influential New York Republicans on a political errand to the White House. The
President was explaining his views on the patronage question to his deeply interested audience when a tall and lank
employee stuck his head through a door and shouted this
announcement:
"She wants you!"
"Yes, yes," said MIr. Lincoln, visibly annoyed; and he
went on with his explanation.
Presently the door was opened again and the messenger
returned, with more emphatic utterance:

"I say she wants you!"
On April 14, 1865, the President developed at a cabinet
meeting his policy for the speedy and gracious restoration
of old relations between the Northern and Southern States.