Like nearly all great soldiers, Sherman was naturally a gentle person and saddened by war. Everything connected with fighting brought to him chiefly the recollection of its horrors and tragedies and always filled him with pain. So it was that his real heart's preference was for such simple, old-fashioned, plantation-evoking, country-smelling airs as _The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane_. One day during his many visits to our home he asked me to sing this and, when I informed him that I could not because I did not know and did not have the words, he said he would send them to me. This he did; and I took pains after that never to forget his preference. [Illustration: Musical notation; In de lit-tle old log cab-in in de lane.] One night when I was singing in a concert in Washington, I caught sight of him sitting quietly in the audience. He did not even know that I had seen him. Presently the audience wanted an encore and, as was my custom in concerts, I went to the piano to play my own accompaniment. I turned and, meeting the General's eyes, smiled at him. Then I sang his beloved _Little Old Log Cabin_. My reward was his beaming expression of appreciation. He was easily touched by such little personal tributes. "Why on earth did you sing that queer old song, Louise," someone asked me when I was back behind the scenes again. "It was an official request," I replied mysteriously. The end of the war was a strenuous time for the nation; and for actors and singers among others. The combination of work and excitement sent me up to New Hartford in sore need of my summer's rest. But I think, of all the many diverse impressions which that spring made upon my memory, the one that I still carry with me most unforgetably, is a _sound_:--the sound of those shuffling feet, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle,--in the Court House grounds in Chicago: a sound like a great sea or forest in a wind as the people of the nation went in to look at their President whom they loved and who was dead. CHAPTER XII AND SO--TO ENGLAND! The following season was one of concerts and not remarkably enjoyable. In retrospect I see but a hurried jumble of work until our decision, in the spring, to go to England.