Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [103]
“It will be a great advantage to you to cultivate a noticing habit,” he advised. “Accustom yourself to talk of what you see and to write details, and in a conversational, & even narrative style. There is the greatest possible difference in charm between the same narrative told by one person and by another…. No doubt a large part of this difference is to be ascribed to constitutional differences of temperament, but any intelligent person can greatly increase facility of apprehension & expression by careful self culture.” The ascetic refrain of Chase’s instruction to Kate is that an effort of will can surmount most obstacles and self-denial can lead to its own gratifications: “I know you do not like writing…. You can overcome if you will…. I dislike for example to bathe myself all over with cold water in the morning especially when the thermometer is so low as at present: but I find I can when I determine to do so overcome my feeling of dislike and even substitute a certain pleasurable sensation.”
In his efforts to discipline and educate his daughter, Chase did not spare Kate his own morbid thoughts about death. “Remember, my dear child, that the eye of a Holy God is upon you all the time, and that not an act or word or thought is unnoticed by Him. Remember too, that you may die soon…. Already eleven years of your life are passed. You may not live another eleven years…. How short then is this life! And how earnest ought to be our preparation for another!” To illustrate his point, he described the death of a little girl just Kate’s age, the daughter of a fellow senator. The Monday before her death, he had seen her in the capital, “strong, robust, active, intelligent; the very impersonation of life and health. A week after and she had gone from earth. What a lesson was here. Lay it to heart, dear Katie, and may God give you grace.”
If Kate’s school reports were unfavorable, Chase refused to allow her to return home for vacation. “I am sorry that you feel so lonely,” he told her one summer. “I wish I could feel it safe to allow you to visit more freely, but your conversations with Miss Haines have made known to you the reasons why.” He urged her to understand: “you have it in your power greatly to promote my happiness by your good conduct, and greatly to destroy my comfort and peace by ill conduct.”
More often she excelled, relying on her nearly encyclopedic memory and hard work to please her exacting father. If unsparing in his criticism, he was extravagant in his praise. “To an affectionate father” nothing was more gratifying, he told her—not even the thought that he might someday “be made President”—than “a beloved child, improving in intelligence, in manners, in physical development, and giving promise of a rich and delightful future.”
He rewarded her with invitations to Washington, visits she vividly recalled years later. “I knew Clay, Webster and Calhoun,” she proudly told a reporter when she was in her fifties. As a small girl, she was particularly impressed by Clay, so tall that “he had to unwind himself to get up.” At ease with children, Clay “made much of me and I liked him.” Daniel Webster appeared to Kate an “ideal of how a statesman ought to look,” the very words later used to describe her father. “He seldom laughed, yet he was very kind and he used to send me his speeches. I don’t suppose he thought I would read them, but he wanted to compliment me and show that he remembered me and I know that I felt very proud when I saw Daniel Webster’s frank upon pieces of mail which came to me at the New York school.