Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/277

 mien, or at best he accompanied them with a grim smile which was not at all like Abraham Lincoln's hearty laugh at his own jests.

Thus Mr. Stevens' discourse was apt to make him appear as a hardened cynic inaccessible to the finer feelings, to whom it was indifferent whether he gave pain or pleasure. But now and then a remark escaped him—I say “escaped him” because he evidently preferred to wear the acrid tendencies of his character on the outside—which indicated that there was behind his cynicism a rich fund of human kindness and sympathy. And this was strongly confirmed by his neighbors at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his home, where on one of my campaigning tours I once spent a day and a night. With them, even with many of his political opponents, “old Thad,” as they called him, appeared to be eminently popular. They had no end of stories to tell about the protection he had given to fugitive slaves, sometimes at much risk and sacrifice to himself, and of the many benefactions he had bestowed with a lavish hand upon widows and orphans and other persons in need; and of his generous fidelity to his friends. They did, indeed, not revere him as a model of virtue, but of the occasional lapses of his bachelor-life from correct moral standards, which seemed to be well known and freely talked about, they spoke with affectionate lenity of judgment.

When I saw him again in Washington at the opening of the Thirty-ninth Congress in December, 1865, he looked very much aged since our last meeting and infirm in health. In repose his face was like a death-mask, and he was carried in a chair to his seat in the House by two stalwart young negroes. There is good authority for the story that once when they had set him down, he said to them with his grim humor: “Thank you, my good fellows. What shall I do when you are dead and