there I lived like an Indian, an Illinois Indian, barefooted all
summer, moccasined during the winter. Like an Indian, I
knew the meaning of silence, the dread of silence and its
comfort. My father taught me to work but he never taught
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AST
me to love drudgery.
Some of those pioneers used to say:
“Don’t see all you see; don’t hear all you hear.”
That is sound advice. It applies here in Washington. Many
aspects of my life have assumed ridiculous proportions
among these people. The fact that I was a wrestler affronts
some; that I could plow with oxen annoys others. My humor
shocks many. My lizard joke, that I thought very amusing, is
now
in
bad
taste. If I said: “Spit against the wind and you spit in your
own face” ...well, certain politicians might understand and
appreciate that.
I see people and more people. My office is often crowded. I
am criticized for the amount of time I devote to the public.
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OURNAL
My secretaries try to restrain me.
I’ll do the very best I can, the very best I know how. And I
mean to keep doing so to the end. If the end brings me out all
right what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If
the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right
would make no difference.
People have asked me how it feels to be president, and I
sometimes say, if there is an appropriate moment:
You have heard about the man tarred and feathered and
ridden out of town on a rail? A man in the crowd asked him
how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn’t for the
honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.
W. H.
January 20
The other night I had a dream and in that dream I
observed myself in a huge mirror; my face had two distinct
images, one more or less superimposed on the other, the
underneath face much paler than the upper face. The dream
has perplexed me; something about it, its shadowiness
maybe, seems part of my wilderness life, the shadowiness of
those star-roofed nights. Mary was disturbed by my dream.
She interpreted it, saying that it meant that I would be re-
elected for a second term. The pale image meant I would not
finish that term. As she talked about the dream I
remembered how emphatically I felt that I would never
return to Springfield, an emotion that nearly overwhelmed
me as I waved from the train.
W. H.
1864
It was only a few years ago that John Quincy Adams was
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swimming in the Potomac with his son. Adams used to rise at
five, to read the Bible, Commentary, and then read the
newspapers. He was about fifty-seven when he was
President. I recall his vivid description of abolitionist
Lovejoy’s printing press tragedy, in Alton, in ’37, how the
mob destroyed the man’s press and murdered him, such a
fate for a truly conscientious man! A martyr to the cause of
freedom! Adams recounts preacher Joseph Cartwright’s plea
for money, for $450 to buy the freedom of his own three
grandchildren. What a meaningful exemplification of slavery!
