Every room in the White House was darkened,
and every one spoke in subdued tones,
and moved about with muffled tread. The
very atmosphere breathed of the great sorrow
which weighed heavily upon each heart. Mrs.
Lincoln never left her room, and while the body
of her husband was being borne in solemn state
from the Atlantic to the broad prairies of the
West, she was weeping with her fatherless children
 in her private chamber. She denied admittance
to almost every one, and I was her only
companion, except her children, in the days of
her great sorrow.

From: "Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House"
by Elizabeth Keckley
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