I went up, and saw the great man in the room indicated. Feeling that I had no kind of right to intrude upon a man so weighted down with cares as President Lincoln was at that period of the war, I remained long enough to allow his image, as he sat facing me, to be imprinted on my memory, never to be obliterated. My first thought was, “What a tall, awkward man and how badly his clothes fit.” One arm lay upon the table beside which he sat, and the other upon the arm of his chair. I could not, however, bring myself to leave without an interview with the President. On my card being handed him he ceased talking for a moment with his visitor, some man from Missouri, and through the open door asked me in and told me to be seated, and he would soon be through with the business on hand. Thus involuntarily I learned the nature of the business of the gentleman from Missouri, which seemed to be to importune the President to order the release of a number of guerillas who had been committing depredations in the south-west. After a lot of words from the Missourian, Mr. Lincoln said if he would give him “any real good reason why these men should be liberated” it would be done. The conversation continuing, I thought it my part to retire. As I left the room, the President sat with fixed gaze, apparently absorbed in thought, and so preoccupied as not to notice my departure. While disappointed of my interview, I had seen and spoken with the man whose figure stands out in clear and massive outline on the canvas of American history, and I remember this with pardonable pride and satisfaction. A pass was granted me to go wherever I chose in Virginia or about the vicinity of Washington. How I got this pass I cannot even now, after thirty-two years, tell. Some of the persons who assisted me to obtain this great favor are yet alive--not all of them, it is true, but I would be manifestly unwise to tell any more on this point. Being a Canadian, I may freely say, gained me the coveted pass when backed up with some seals of officialdom from our own Canada. More I cannot, dare not say, only that this pass lies on my writing desk beside me as I write these lines. Without delay I set out to cross the Potomac, mounted upon a horse hired from a Washington livery stable. It was when entering the Long Bridge, as the wooden structure of two miles in length over the Potomac then was called, that I first showed my pass. My first thought upon gaining the Virginia shore was of the terrible barrenness and bleakness of the country about. There were no roads, no fences, no buildings, no woods, but just a mass of the lightest and meanest red dust one ever could conceive of--dust quite four inches deep, so that of necessity I rode [Illustration: WORLD TO COME TO AN END. STARS FALLING, 1833.] in a perfect cloud and had to canter sharply to get away from it.