“It’s a queer thing to say, Billy, but I get real comfort out of the hospitals. When you know what the wounded have been through--how they have laid on the battlefields for hours and hours uncared for, how they’ve suffered bein’ hauled up here, there ain’t nuthin’ consoles you like knowin’ that their wounds have been dressed and that they are clean and fed, and looked after. Then they are so thankful to be here--to have some one to see to ’em. I remember one day a boy who had been all shot up but was gettin’ better sayin’ to me: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I can’t sleep nights thinkin’ how comfortable I am.’ It’s so good to find ’em realizin’ that everybody cares--the whole country. People come and read to ’em and write letters for ’em and bring ’em things. Why, they have real good times at some of the places. Down to Armory Square Bliss has got a melodeon and they have concerts sometimes, and there are flags up and flowers in the windows. I got some flower seeds last summer for Bliss to plant outside, but they turned out to be lettuce and onions. The boys ate ’em and you ought to heard ’em laugh about my flowers. I tell you it makes me happy when I go around and find the poor fellows smilin’ up at me and sayin’: ‘You’re takin’ good care of us, Mr. Lincoln,’ and maybe crack a joke. “They take it all so natural, trampin’ and fightin’ and dyin’. It’s a wonderful army--wonderful! You couldn’t believe that boys that back home didn’t ever have a serious thought in their heads could ever be so dead set as they be about an idee. Think of it! A million men are lookin’ up at these stars to-night, a million men ready to die for the Union to-morrow if it’s got to be done to save it! I tell you, it shows what’s in ’em. They’re all the same, young or old--the Union’s got to be saved! Of course you’d expect it more of the old ones, and we’ve got some old ones, older than the law allows, too. ’Tain’t only the youngsters who have lied themselves into the service. Only to-day a Congressman was in tellin’ me about one of his constituents, said he was over sixty-five and white-haired when he first enlisted. They refused him of course, and I’ll be blamed if the old fellow didn’t dye his hair black and change his name, and when they asked him his age, said: ‘Rising thirty-five,’ and he’s been fightin’ good for two years and now they’d found him out. The Congressman asked me what he ought to do. I told him if ’twas me I’d keep him in hair dye.” * * * * * We was still a while and then Mr. Lincoln began talkin’, more to himself than to me.