While Mr. Bowen was in Washington, he drove out, by invitation one evening, with one or two friends, to the Soldier’s Home, where the President spent the nights of midsummer. More at leisure there than at the “shop,” as he was in the habit of calling his official chamber at the White House, Mr. Lincoln sat down with the party for a leisurely conversation. “I know,” he said to Mr. Bowen, “that you are a great admirer of Mr. Chase and Mr. Seward. Now, I will tell you a circumstance that may please you. Before sunset of election-day, in 1860, I was pretty sure, from the despatches I received, that I was elected. The very first thing that I settled in my mind, after reaching this conclusion, was that these two great leaders of the party should occupy the two first places in my cabinet.” LXIV. “The Soldier’s Home,” writes a California lady,[10] who visited Mr. Lincoln there, “is a few miles out of Washington on the Maryland side. It is situated on a beautifully wooded hill, which you ascend by a winding path, shaded on both sides by wide-spread branches, forming a green arcade above you. When you reach the top you stand between two mansions, large, handsome, and substantial, but with nothing about them indicative of the character of either. That on your left is the Presidential country-house; that directly before you, the ‘Rest’ for soldiers who are too old for further service.... The ‘Home’ only admitted soldiers of the regular army; but in the graveyard near at hand there are numberless graves--some without a spear of grass to hide their newness--that hold the bodies of volunteers. “While we stood in the soft evening air, watching the faint trembling of the long tendrils of waving willow, and feeling the dewy coolness that was flung out by the old oaks above us, Mr. Lincoln joined us, and stood silent, too, taking in the scene. “‘How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country’s wishes blest,’-- he said, softly. “There was something so touching in the picture opened before us,--the nameless graves, the solemn quiet, the tender twilight air, but more particularly our own feminine disposition to be easily melted, I suppose,--that it made us cry as if we stood beside the tomb of our own dead, and gave point to the lines which he afterwards quoted:-- “‘And women o’er the graves shall weep, Where nameless heroes calmly sleep.’” * * * * * “Around the ‘Home’ grows every variety of tree, particularly of the evergreen class. Their branches brushed into the carriage as we passed along, and left with us that pleasant, woody smell belonging to leaves. One of the ladies, catching a bit of green from one of these intruding branches, said it was cedar, and another thought it spruce.