“Didn’t I know it? Think bein’ president would change him—not a mite. Well, he had a right smart lot of people to see, but soon as he was through we went out on the back stoop and set down and talked and talked. He asked me about pretty nigh everybody in Springfield. I just let loose and told him about the weddin’s and births and the funerals and the buildin’, and I guess there wan’t a yarn I’d heard in the three years and a half he’d been away that I didn’t spin for him. Laugh—you ought to a heard him laugh—just did my heart good, for I could see what they’d been doin’ to him. Always was a thin man, but, Lordy, he was thinner’n ever now, and his face was kind a drawn and gray—enough to make you cry. “Well, we had supper and then talked some more, and about ten o’clock I started downtown. Wanted me to stay all night, but I says to myself, ‘Billy, don’t you overdo it. You’ve cheered him up, and you better light out and let him remember it when he’s tired.’ So I said, ‘Nope, Mr. Lincoln, can’t, goin’ back to Springfield to-morrow. Ma don’t like to have me away and my boy ain’t no great shakes keepin’ store.’ ‘Billy,’ he says, ‘what did you come down here for?’ ‘I come to see you, Mr. Lincoln.’ ‘But you ain’t asked me for anything, Billy. What is it? Out with it. Want a post-office?’ he said, gigglin’, for he knowed I didn’t. ‘No, Mr. Lincoln, just wanted to see _you_—felt kind a lonesome—been so long since I’d sen you, and I was afraid I’d forgit some of them yarns if I didn’t unload soon.’ “Well, sir, you ought to seen his face as he looked at me. “‘Billy Brown,’ he says, slow-like, ‘do you mean to tell me you came all the way from Springfield, Illinois, just to have a _visit_ with _me_, that you don’t want an office for anybody, nor a pardon for anybody, that you ain’t got no complaints in your pockets, nor any advice up your sleeve?’ “‘Yes, sir,’ I says, ‘that’s about it, and I’ll be durned if I wouldn’t go to _Europe_ to see you, if I couldn’t do it no other way, Mr. Lincoln.’ “Well, sir, I never was so astonished in my life. He just grabbed my hand and shook it nearly off, and the tears just poured down his face, and he says, ‘Billy, you never’ll know what good you’ve done me. I’m homesick, Billy, just plumb homesick, and it seems as if this war never would be over. Many a night I can see the boys a-dyin’ on the fields and can hear their mothers cryin’ for ’em at home, and I can’t help ’em, Billy. I have to send them down there. We’ve got to save the Union, Billy, we’ve got to.’