Here, in this room, more plainly furnished than many law and business offices--plainer than the offices of the heads of bureaus in the Executive Departments--Mr. Lincoln spent the days of his Presidency. Here he received everybody, from the Lieutenant-General and Chief-Justice, down to the private soldier and humblest citizen. Custom had established certain rules of precedence, fixing the order in which officials should be received. The members of the Cabinet and the high officers of the army were, of course, received always promptly. Senators and members of Congress, who are usually charged with the presentation of petitions and recommendations for appointments, and who are expected to right every wrong and correct every evil each one of their respective constituents may be suffering, or imagine himself to be suffering, have an immense amount of business with the Executive. I have often seen as many as ten or fifteen Senators and twenty or thirty Members of the House in the hall, waiting their turn to see the President. They would go to the ante-room, or up to the hall in front of the reception-room, and await their turns. The order of precedence was, first the Vice-President, if present, then the Speaker of the House, and then Senators and Members of the House in the order of their arrival, and the presentation of their cards. Frequently Senators and Members would go to the White House as early as eight or nine in the morning, to secure precedence and an early interview. While they waited, the loud ringing laugh of Mr. Lincoln, in which he was sure to be joined by all _inside_, but which was rather provoking to those _outside_, was often heard by the waiting and impatient crowd. Here, from early morning to late at night, he sat, listened, and decided--patient, just, considerate, hopeful. All the people came to him as to a father. He was more accessible than any of the leading members of his Cabinet--much more so than Mr. Seward, shut up in the State Department, writing his voluminous dispatches; far more so than Mr. Stanton, indefatigable, stern, abrupt, but ever honest and faithful. Mr. Lincoln saw everybody--governors, senators, congressmen, officers, ministers, bankers, merchants, farmers--all classes of people; all approached him with confidence, from the highest to the lowest; but this incessant labor and fearful responsibility told upon his vigorous frame. He left Illinois for the capital, with a frame of iron and nerves of steel. His old friends, who knew him in Illinois as a man who knew not what illness was, who knew him ever genial and sparkling with fun, as the months and years of the war passed slowly on, saw the wrinkles on his forehead deepened into furrows; and the laugh of old days became sometimes almost hollow; it did not now always seem to come from the heart, as in former years. Anxiety, responsibility, care, thought, wore upon even his giant frame, and his nerves of steel became at times irritable. For more than four