Lincoln was particularly fascinated by the wonderful happenings recorded
in history. He loved to read of those mighty events which had been
foretold, and often brooded upon these subjects. His early convictions
upon occult matters led him to read all books tending’ to strengthen
these convictions.
The following lines, in Byron’s “Dream,” were frequently quoted by him:
“Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world
And a wide realm of wild reality.
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being.”
Those with whom he was associated in his early youth and young manhood,
and with whom he was always in cordial sympathy, were thorough believers
in presentiments and dreams; and so Lincoln drifted on through years
of toil and exceptional hardship--meditative, aspiring, certain of his
star, but appalled at times by its malignant aspect. Many times prior to
his first election to the Presidency he was both elated and alarmed by
what seemed to him a rent in the veil which hides from mortal view what
the future holds.
He saw, or thought he saw, a vision of glory and of blood, himself
the central figure in a scene which his fancy transformed from giddy
enchantment to the most appalling tragedy.
“WHY DON’T THEY COME!”
The suspense of the days when the capital was isolated, the expected
troops not arriving, and an hourly attack feared, wore on Mr. Lincoln
greatly.
“I begin to believe,” he said bitterly, one day, to some Massachusetts
soldiers, “that there is no North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth. Rhode
Island is another. You are the only real thing.”
And again, after pacing the floor of his deserted office for a
half-hour, he was heard to exclaim to himself, in an anguished tone:
“Why don’t they come! Why don’t they come!”