“I advise you always to yield to such impulses,” he said. “You did me as great a favor as the boy. It was a new experience for me--a study that was interesting, though I have had more to do with people of his class than any other. Did you know that Scott and I had a long visit? I was much interested in the boy. I am truly sorry that he is dead, for he was a good boy--too good a boy to be shot for obeying nature. I am glad I interfered.”
“Mr. Lincoln, I wish your treatment of this matter could be written into history.”
“Tut! tut!” he broke in; “none of that. By-the-way, do you remember what Jeanie Deans said to Queen Caroline when the Duke of Argyle procured her an opportunity to beg for her sister’s life?”
“I remember the incident well, but not the language.”
“I remember both. This is the paragraph in point: ‘It is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily ourselves that we think on other people’s sufferings. Our hearts are waxed light within us then, and we are for righting our ain wrangs and fighting our ain battles. But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the body--and when the hour of death comes, that comes to high and low--oh, then it isna what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist pleasantly. And the thoughts that ye hae intervened to spare the puir thing’s life will be sweeter in that hour, come when it may, than if a word of your mouth could hang the whole Porteous mob at the tail of ae tow.’”
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lincoln and the Sleeping Sentinel, by L. E. Chittenden