Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/614

594 little moment to have sufficient notice taken of it to accurately fix the date. He was a boy old enough during the war, though, to know something of the struggle going on around him, for, speaking in public of Lincoln once, I heard him say: "My first acquaintance with our hero was this: Night after night, before the dawn of day, on an old slave plantation in Virginia, I recall the form of my sainted mother bending over the bundle of rags that enveloped my body, on a dirt floor, breathing a fervent prayer to Heaven that



'Massa Lincoln' might succeed, and that some day she and I might be free."

Another incident of those days I have heard him tell of in these words: "Word was sent over the plantation for all 'the hands' to come up to the 'big house.' We went, and to us men, women, and children gathered in the yard some one standing on the veranda read a paper. I was too young to understand why the men and women around me should have begun to shout, 'Hallelujah! Praise