Political Notes - Il Penseroso

Il Penseroso

Recently Washington newspapers took note of a distinguished man returning to his home in the Capital, but by and large the country took little note, considering how distinguished a man he is--one-time Secretary of War, a former Ambassador at the Court of St. James's, a man who was on the scene at the assassination of three presidents and was the son of one of them.

To be sure, Robert Todd Lincoln is 82, an age at which any man is entitled to retire from the unblinking gaze of the public eye, but, even more, he has encouraged that eye to rest its glance elsewhere. He has always done the best things quietly, beginning with the selection of his father, in 1843, continuing through his education at the University of Illinois, Phillips Exeter and Harvard. The last of these he left in 1864 to go on the staff of General Grant. He was present at the fall of Petersburg and at Appomattox Court House. The day after his arrival back in Washington he was present at his father's assassination. Two years later he was admitted to the bar in Illinois and shortly afterward married. In 1881 he became Secretary of War under President Garfield. He arrived one day at a railway station to meet Mr. Garfield, and as he did so Garfield was shot. He was the only member of Garfield's Cabinet retained by President Arthur; so he served a full four years. Then he went back to law and became special counsel to the Pullman Co. In 1889 President Harrison sent him to London as Ambassador. His four years in London were his last in public office. He was asked to run for Senator (in Illinois), for President, but declined to entertain the prospect. Instead he went back to the Pullman Co., and on the death of George W. Pullman in 1897, became its President. It was during this period that he visited the Buffalo Exposition just as President McKinley was shot. He served as President of the Pullman Co. until

1911, when he resigned and became Chairman of the Board.

Since then he has lived very quietly. Neither on his own account nor on that of his father was he ever willing to go into the limelight. Occasionally he has put in a word when he thought his father's reputation was being misstated in print or his figure was being malformed in sculpture, but he never entered into controversy. His last public appearance was at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial by President Harding. Even then he declined to be a guest of honor. So whether he is at his summer home at Manchester, Vt., or his big Colonial brick mansion at 3014 "N" Street, N. W., at the Capital, Mr. Robert Todd Lincoln attracts no attention from the public's eye.