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Show Hurt Jw EllsmorlSsDesM. fROM the president's room in the White House you -xan see prominent objects in Alexandria, six miles down the Potomac. The one prominent object ob-ject which then for days attracted and offended of-fended the patriot's eye from those windows win-dows was the rebel flag floating from the staff on the roof of the hotel in that city, as if in defiance defi-ance of the national capitol, a few miles away. President Lincoln's young neighbor of Springfield, 111., Elmer E. Ellsworth, mounted alone to the roof, cut it down, and was himself killed by the rebel owner as he descended the staircase. "I called on the president just after that occurrence," wrote John A. Kas son, "and congratulated him, as I stood by the window, on the improved view j down the Potomac, where, instead of , the confederate, the union flag now floated. I was taken aback by Mr. Lincoln's joyless response, "Yes, but It was at a terrible cost!" and the tears rushed into his eyes as he said it. It was his first personal realization realiza-tion of what the war meant. His tender ten-der respect for human life had re-:eived re-:eived its first wound. It was not bat- ' tie, it was assassination. He did not foresee the hundreds of i :housands who were to fall before the great strife would be ended. He afterward aft-erward learned to bear the loss of ;housands in battle more bravely than ae bore the loss of this one in the I beginning of the contest. But the loss Hi a single life, otherwise than in the ranged fight, was always hard for hi ru as so often shown in his action upon the judgment of courts martial. After the repulse of Fredericksburg he is reported to have said: "If there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do, I pity him." "One morning, calling on him at an early h.our on business," says Scuy-ler Scuy-ler Colfax, "I 'found him so pale and careworn that I inquired the cause. He replied, telling me of bad news received re-ceived at a late hour of the night, and not yet printed, adding that he had not closed his eyes or breakfasted; and - then he said, with an anguished expression ex-pression which I shall never forget, 'How willingly would I exchange places plac-es today with the soldier who sleeps on the ground in the army of the Potomac." Po-tomac." "The morning after bloody battle of the Wilderness I saw him walk up and down the executive chamber, his long arms behind his back, his dark features fea-tures contracted still more with gloom, and as he looked up I thought his face the saddest one I had ever seen. He exclaimed: 'Why do we suffer reverses rever-ses after reverses! Could we have avoided this terrible, bloody war! Was it not forced upon us. Is it never to end!' But he quickly recovered, and told me the sad aggregate of those days of bloodshed." In the "Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln" Lin-coln" it is related that during the war a lady belonging to a prominent Kentucky Ken-tucky family visited Washington to beg for her son's pardon, who was then in prison under sentence of death for belonging to a band of guerillas who had committed many murders and outrages. With the mother was her daughter, a beautiful young lady, who was an accomplished musician. Mr. Lincoln received the visitors in his usual kindly manner and the mother made known the object of her visit, accompanying her plea with tears and sobs and all the customary dramatic instances. There were probably extenuating circumstances in favor of the rebel prisoner, and while the president seemed seem-ed to be deeply pondering the young lady moved to the piano near by, and, taking a seat, commenced to sing "Gentle Annie," a sweet and pathetic ballad, which before the war was a familiar song in almost every household house-hold in the union, and is not yet entirely en-tirely forgotten, for that matter. It is to be presumed that the young lady sang the song with more plantiveness and more effect than Old Abe had ever heard it in Springfield, j During the song he arose from his seat, crossed the room to a window in the westward, through which he gazed for several minutes with that "sad, far away look" which has so often been ! noted as one of his peculiarities. His ; memory, no doubt, went back to the i days of his humble life on the banks ; of the Sangamon, and with visions of ' old Salem and its rustic store cama ! a picture of the "Gentle Annie" of his youth, whose ashes had rested for many long years under the wild flow-i flow-i ers and brambles of the old rural bury-I bury-I ing ground, but whose spirit then, per-! per-! haps, guided him to the side of mercy. ! Then wiping his eyes, he advanced quickly to the desk, wrote a brief note, 1 v.-hirh he handed to the lady, and in-! in-! formed her that it was the pardon she : sought. |