where there was room to write. “Do you know,” he said, as he held the document of life or death in his hand, “that table puts me in mind of a little story of the Patagonians. They open oysters and eat them, and throw the shells out of the window till the pile gets higher than the house, and then”--he said this, writing his signature, and handing them the paper--“_they move_.” Holland tells us that, in a letter to him, a personal friend of the President said, “I called on him one day in the earlier part of the war. He had just written a pardon for a young man who had been sentenced to be shot for sleeping at his post as sentinel. He remarked, as he read it to me, “I could not think of going into eternity with the blood of that poor young man on my skirts.” Then he added, “It is not to be wondered at that a boy raised on a farm, probably in the habit of going to bed at dark, should, when required to watch, fall asleep; and I cannot consent to shoot him for such an act.” This story has a touching continuation in the fact that the dead body of this youth was found among the slain on the field of Fredericksburg, wearing next his heart a photograph of the great President, beneath which was written, _God bless President Lincoln_. Once, when a General went to Washington to urge the execution of twenty-four deserters, believing that the army was in danger from the frequency of desertion, President Lincoln replied, “General, there are already too many weeping widows in the United States. For God’s sake, don’t ask me to add to the number, for I won’t do it.”