Chapter 38

I worked some weeks before my regiment was sent forward. I
planned to be at home for a day, but they needed me on the staff,
and I dreaded the pain of a parting, the gravity of which my return
would serve only to accentuate. So I wrote them a cheerful letter,
and kept at work. It was my duty to interview some of the great
men of that day as to the course of the government. I remember
Commodore Vanderbilt came down to see me in shirt-sleeves and
slippers that afternoon, with a handkerchief tied about his neck in
place of a collar - a blunt man, of simple manners and a big heart,
one who spoke his mind in good, plain talk, and, I suppose, he got
along with as little profanity as possible, considering his many
cares. He called me 'boy' and spoke of a certain public man as a
'big sucker'. I soon learned that to him a 'sucker' was the lowest
and meanest thing in the world. He sent me away with nothing but
a great admiration of him. As a rule, the giants of that day were
plain men of the people, with no frills upon them, and with a way
of hitting from the shoulder. They said what they meant and meant
it hard. I have heard Lincoln talk when his words had the whiz of a
bullet and his arm the jerk of a piston.

John Trumbull invited McClingan, of whom I had told him much,
and myself to dine with him an evening that week. I went in my
new dress suit - that mark of sinful extravagance for which Fate
had brought me down to the pounding of rocks under Boss
McCormick. Trumbull's rooms were a feast for the eye - aglow
with red roses. He introduced me to Margaret Hull and her mother,
who were there to dine with us. She was a slight woman of thirty
then, with a face of no striking beauty, but of singular sweetness.
Her dark eyes had a mild and tender light in them; her voice a
plaintive, gentle tone, the like of which one may hear rarely if
ever. For years she had been a night worker in the missions of the
lower city, and many an unfortunate had been turned from the way
of evil by her good offices. I sat beside her at the table, and she
told me of her work and how often she had met Trumbull in his
night walks.

'Found me a hopeless heathen,' he remarked.

'To save him I had to consent to marry him,' she said, laughing.

'"Who hath found love is already in Heaven,"'said McClingan. 'I
have not found it and I am in" he hesitated, as if searching for a
synonym.

'A boarding house on William Street,' he added.

The remarkable thing about Margaret Hull was her simple faith. It
looked to no glittering generality for its reward, such as the soul s
'highest good much talked of in the philosophy of that time. She
believed that, for every soul she saved, one jewel would be added