Extra Credit Questions

[David Lockmiller]

Tad offered to help the head gardener water the South Lawn with the hose to which was attached a newly invented variable nozzle. He played that the White House was on fire and, by turning the nozzle this way and that, learned how to make it sprinkle and spray, and do a sudden spurt, then pour a steady stream. While he was thus experimenting, who should burst out of the south door and come stamping down the long, curved stairway but the Secretary of War, still brandishing a paper under the nose of the President, who was following him.

Mr. Lincoln had just written a dispatch to be sent to the front forbidding a young soldier to be shot the next day, which Stanton testily insisted was demoralizing the discipline of the army. He had just descended to the lawn and turned about for a parting shot: “I tell you, Mr. President, if this thing don’t stop –“

Bzt! – a spurt through the new nozzle knocked that paper out of the Secretary’s hand and sent it fluttering down the grass, and a firm stream struck the astounded functionary full in the face, then played up and down his shuddering form. Stanton stood gurgling, gasping and strangling, thickly uttering a medley of sublimated profanity, while making frantic clutches in the direction of the grinning cause of his discomfiture.

Right here a soldier guard stationed at the White House caught the boy and took him into the White House to change his wet clothing.

Stanton, still shivering, shouted up to the President: “I’d like to put that boy in the calaboose.”

“No, Stanton,” Mr. Lincoln replied kindly, “that would do more harm than good. Can’t you see that you’re to blame for this whole business? You’ve kept that boy’s blood at the boiling point for several weeks now. He doesn’t like the way you talk to me. After you went out the other day he asked me why I didn’t take you across my knees and give you a good spanking – and because I laughed at the idea then, he has taken the matter into his own hands.

“Let me give you a bit of fatherly counsel. You know as well as I do that men are just boys of larger growth. You’re getting yourself disliked on all sides by fuming and swearing at everybody, and Tad isn’t the only person who resents some of the things you say to and about me. If you can make that boy your friend, you will be better able to win the war and save the Union.”

Edwin M. Stanton forgave Tad and even the sorry plight he was in, as he seized the hand of the Chief and said fervently: “I believe you’re right, Mr. President, I believe you’re right.”

-- Thomas F. Pendel "Thirty-Six Years in the White House"