Attention was immediately directed to the ravelled American stocking rapidly running down. The blue yarn of the navy was taken up stitch by stitch. The threads of the little army were picked up, lying loosely around at a distance from the capital, and, by much knotting and splicing, were put upon the old, rusty, war-needles for work. It was very sad business for the gentle-minded Lincoln, although helped by Mr. Seward in the State Department,—a very vigorous and manifold letter-writer,—by the wide-headed Chase in the Treasury, by the strong-knuckled Cameron in the noisy War Bureau, and by that long-bearded Gideon Welles, whose unthatched upper story became in time, like a naval depot, the receptacle of a great deal of odd material, most of it too old to be serviceable. In truth, with his funny ways, dropping anchor when he should be making steam, bothered with new inventions, gun bores and spiral devices, which he had never seen at Hartford, and quite incomprehensible often by any one, puzzled by stern duties and running about to know where the ship’s waste was, the latter old gentleman was about the only joke which went about for four years. Notice by the government of its intention to add to the eighty men in Fort Sumter drew upon that little stone pentagon a lively cannonade of thirty-six hours, by General Beauregard, the Confederate military leader, distorting its resolute visage, and causing wry faces everywhere throughout the North, and very many among the strikers at the South. The first whizzing shot was the first uneasy spasm in that horrible nightmare which crept over America and held it bound for four years. For the sake of human nature; for the sake of our common past, and our now dawning brighter future, we would fain draw over the face of the disturbed sleeper a veil, which should but dimly delineate, if it did not altogether hide from view, the uncoffined ghastliness. The purposes of history, however, forbid us, nurses as we are in trouble, as boon companions in feasting, to quit the room; and so holding still, as best we can, the hand of genial Humor, we sit down amid the uncomic scenes of a fratricidal struggle.