Tad Lincoln's Father

Chapter 12

twelve Saturday morning, at our house, was devoted to a study of the Sundayschool lesson. Willie and Tad appeared early, as they always did, when Bud and Holly did not appear early at the White House. The Lincoln boys had enrolled themselves with my brothers in the Sunday-school of our church, the Fourth Presbyterian, and Mrs. Lincoln had expressed to my mother her pleasure that they were learning their lessons and hoped we “would encourage them to keep on.” To sister Julia had been intrusted the not altogether pleasant duty of inculcating a reasonable working knowledge of two pages of the blue question book, while she embroidered a ruby velvet watchcase, which was to be Bud’s Christmas present to some idolized officer. It was December and cold. Willie and Tad had been talking of winters in Illinois, of skating and sledding and snow-balling. My Washington -bred brothers listened with round eyes. They possessed no mittens, no sled, no skates. They had never known the delights of a real snowstorm . Perhaps Washington was farther south before the war, because in the time I lived there, very few were the occasions when enough snow was on the ground to justify the appearance even for an hour of the nondescript creations known in the capital as sleighs. Tad dashed at the Sabbath questions with the cheerful audacity characteristic of him. Willie sighed as he said that there were “more hard words than ever in it.” He and Bud debated whether their teacher would require them to have it perfect or would “let them off easy on the names.” 78 tad lincoln’s father The very youngest son of the family, Willie Taft, being what Tad called a “Sunday-school infant” and not required to study any lesson, sat curled up on the window seat, where, by craning his neck, he could see a bit of the square, the barracks, and the end of the guardhouse with Sentry Number 1 appearing and disappearing with clocklike regularity. The older boys studied with set, determined looks. There were several bits of catechism deftly interpolated; and in our Sunday-school these must be recited verbatim. Tad and Holly wriggled and fidgeted, repeating the lines in a loud whisper, each gradually departing from the text and copying the other’s mistakes until they had to begin all over again. The infant scholar in the window also diverted attention by proclaiming at intervals, “There’s a dwunk man walking the beat with a log,” or “Here comes the officer of the day; they’re turning out the guard.” Again it would be, “I fink there’s a hundred army mules up the street fighting right smart.” Tad paused in the murmur of “the moral law—the moral law—” to ask, “Julie, what is a mud sill?” “Never mind, Tad, go on. ‘The moral law is summarily comprehended —’ ” “But, what is it?” “Why, a Yankee, Tad.” “Well, a boy in Lafayette Square said we were ’em and we am not.” “Of course not,” said Willie Lincoln. “Everybody knows they come from Connecticut.” “Bud and Willie wouldn’t let me punch him ’cause they said it would be put in the papers, but I will if he says it again.” It was still cold and wet and blustering. Only an occasional officer rode past, his great cape over his head, followed by a dejected orderly. The boys watched the gusts of rain anxiously. They had been promised a ride with the staff if it was not too stormy. My cousin, a tall young captain from “Camp Desolation,” came and leaned against the doorway and sympathetically confessed that he himself had to learn the Commandments and Creed before the morrow’s morn. tad lincoln’s father 79 “What for?” demanded the boys, astonished that the shoulderstrapped six-footer should still be in thralldom to the blue question book. “Because we have a Sunday-school in the defenses, and mind you, the colonel is superintendent. I never saw anything in the army regulations ,” the captain complained, “about having to drill the men in the Bible as well as the manual of arms.” “Snow! snow!” shouted Tad, as some light flakes flew by the window. “That’s what I like better’n anything. I hope it’ll be over the fences.” Tad’s wish was futile. To his great disappointment the snowflakes grew more and...