March 4th.–The President very quietly rode down to the Capitol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon, either because he wish’d to be on hand to sign bills, or to get rid of marching in line with the absurd procession, the muslin temple of liberty and pasteboard monitor. I saw him on his return, at three o’clock, after the performance was over. He was in his plain two-horse barouche, and look’d very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attach’d to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native Western form of manliness.) By his side sat his little boy, of ten years. There were no soldiers, only a lot of civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs over their shoulders, riding around the carriage. (At the inauguration four years ago, he rode down and back again surrounded by a dense mass of arm’d cavalrymen eight deep, with drawn sabres; and there were sharpshooters station’d at every corner on the route.) I ought to make mention of the closing levee of Saturday night last. Never before was such a compact jam in front of the White House–all the grounds fill’d, and away out to the spacious sidewalks. I was there, as I took a notion to go–was in the rush inside with the crowd–surged along the passage-ways, the blue and other rooms, and through the great east room. Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from the Marine Band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all in black, with white kid gloves and a claw-hammer coat, receiving, as in duty bound, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, and as if he would give anything to be somewhere else.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your

powerfulest scene and show,
‘Twould not be you, Niagara–nor you, ye limitless

prairies–nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite–nor Yellowstone, with all its

spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies,

appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones–nor Huron’s belt of mighty

lakes–nor Mississippi’s stream:
–This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now,

I’d name–the still small voice vibrating–America’s

choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen–the act itself the

main, the quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d–sea-board

and inland–Texas to Maine–the Prairie States–

Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West–the

paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling–(a swordless

conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern

Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity–welcoming the darker

odds, the dross:
–Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to

purify–while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.