He acknowledged that he could not always trust to this, but was generally guided by it and found he got along very well with it. Sometimes, however, he did make a mistake, as when on one occasion he had talked to a man for half an hour as though he was a hotel keeper, and found out afterward that he was a preacher. Through all this conversation there had run an undercurrent of whimsicality, partly, no doubt, the conscious effort of a sorely tried mind to gain a few minutes' respite from its pressing cares, but none the less showing a keen and deep-seated appreciation of the funny side of life. Only once did this humor forsake him, and that was when Lincoln spoke of Tad. The little boy had been playing quietly by himself all the time--apparently he was as much at home in the Cabinet Room as in any other part of the White House--and Lincoln told me Tad had been sick and that it worried him. Then he put his head in both his hands, looked down at the table, and said, "No man ought to wish to be President of the United States!" Still holding his head in his hands, he said to me, "Young man, do not take a political office unless you are compelled to; there are times when it is heart-crushing!" He said he had thought how many a mother and father had lost their children in the war--just boys. "And I am so anxious about my Tad, I cannot help but think how they must feel. If Tad had died--" He grew very sad; for a few minutes his face was gloomy, and it seemed as though half a sob was coming up in his throat. Lincoln was not one of those men who go to the extremes of grief or the extremes of joy; but other people have told me, as I myself now saw, that when there came to him that seizure of deep sadness he had to fight himself for a few minutes to overcome it. This impressed me that day very deeply. Breaking off abruptly from what he had been talking about--war and Artemus Ward--and speaking suddenly of Tad, he had dropped down in that dejected position, and for a few minutes looked so sad I thought something awful must suddenly have come to his mind. But it seemed, after all, to be only the fear that Tad, who was not very well, might die. Who can say what vistas of thought that idea may have opened. Chapter V: What Made Him Laugh