not possible for either husband or wife to allude to him without showing intense feeling. Mr. Lincoln rarely mentioned his name, and Mrs. Lincoln never afterward entered the room where he died, or the Blue Room in which his body lay. Several instances are told by Mr. Carpenter, the artist, of the affection entertained by the President for his sons. On one occasion while paying a visit to Commodore Porter at Fortress Monroe, “Tad,” the youngest son, accompanied his father, and the latter, noticing that the banks of the river were dotted with spring blossoms, the President said, with the manner of one asking a special favor: “Commodore, Tad is very fond of flowers; won’t you let a couple of your men take a boat and go with him for an hour or two along shore, and gather a few? it will be a great gratification to him.” On another occasion, while he was at Fortress Monroe awaiting military operations upon the Peninsula, he called his aide, who was writing in the adjoining room, and read to him selections from “Hamlet” and “King John.” Reciting the words where Constance bewails her imprisoned lost boy, Mr. Lincoln said: “Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness that it was not a reality? Just so I dream of my boy Willie.” Overcome with emotion, he dropped his head on the table and sobbed aloud. A man who could thus feel towards his children may well be called an excellent father: and such Mr. Lincoln was. He was, as a lady relative of his who spent many months in his house said of him, “all that a husband, father and neighbor should be: kind and affectionate to his wife and child and very pleasant to all around him. Never,” said she, “did I hear him utter an unkind word.”