SPECIFIC FOR FOREIGN “RASH.”
It was in the latter part of 1863 that Russia offered its friendship to the United States, and sent a strong fleet of warships, together with munitions of war, to this country to be used in any way the President might see fit. Russia was not friendly to England and France, these nations having defeated her in the Crimea a few years before. As Great Britain and the Emperor of the French were continually bothering him, President Lincoln used Russia’s kindly feeling and action as a means of keeping the other two powers named in a neutral state of mind. Underneath the cartoon we here reproduce, which was labeled “Drawing Things to a Head,” and appeared in the issue of “Harper’s Weekly,” of November 28, 1863, was this DR. LINCOLN (to smart boy of the shop): “Mild applications of Russian Salve for our friends over the way, and heavy doses—and plenty of it for our Southern patient!!”
Secretary of State Seward was the “smart boy” of the shop, and “our friend over the way” were England and France. The latter bothered President Lincoln no more, but it is a fact that the Confederate privateer Alabama was manned almost entirely by British seamen; also, that when the Alabama was sunk by the Kearsarge, in the summer of 1864, the Confederate seamen were picked up by an English vessel, taken to Southhampton, and set at liberty!
FAVORED THE OTHER SIDE.
Lincoln was candor itself when conducting his side of a case in court. General Mason Brayman tells this story as an illustration:
“It is well understood by the profession that lawyers do not read authors favoring the opposite side. I once heard Mr. Lincoln, in the Supreme Court of Illinois, reading from a reported case some strong points in favor of his argument. Reading a little too far, and before becoming aware of it, plunged into an authority against himself.
“Pausing a moment, he drew up his shoulders in a comical way, and half laughing, went on, ‘There, there, may it please the court, I reckon I’ve scratched up a snake. But, as I’m in for it, I guess I’ll read it through.’
“Then, in his most ingenious and matchless manner, he went on with his argument, and won his case, convincing the court that it was not much of a snake after all.”
LINCOLN AND THE “SHOW”
Lincoln was fond of going all by himself to any little show or concert. He would often slip away from his fellow-lawyers and spend the entire evening at a little magic lantern show intended for children.
A traveling concert company was always sure of drawing Lincoln. A Mrs. Hillis, a member of the “Newhall Family,” and a good singer, was the only woman who ever seemed to exhibit any liking for him—so Lincoln said. He attended a negro-minstrel show in Chicago, once, where he heard Dixie sung. It was entirely new, and pleased him greatly.
“MIXING” AND “MINGLING.”
An Eastern newspaper writer told how Lincoln, after his first nomination, received callers, the majority of them at his law office:
“While talking to two or three gentlemen and standing up, a very hard looking customer rolled in and tumbled into the only vacant chair and the one lately occupied by Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln’s keen eye took in the fact, but gave no evidence of the notice.
“Turning around at last he spoke to the odd specimen, holding out his hand at such a distance that our friend had to vacate the chair if he accepted the proffered shake. Mr. Lincoln quietly resumed his chair.
“It was a small matter, yet one giving proof more positively than a larger event of that peculiar way the man has of mingling with a mixed crowd.”
TOOK PART OF THE BLAME.
Among the lawyers who traveled the circuit with Lincoln was Usher F. Linder, whose daughter, Rose Linder Wilkinson, has left many Lincoln reminiscences.
“One case in which Mr. Lincoln was interested concerned a member of my own family,” said Mrs. Wilkinson. “My brother, Dan, in the heat of a quarrel, shot a young man named Ben Boyle and was arrested. My father was seriously ill with inflammatory rheumatism at the time, and could scarcely move hand or foot. He certainly could not defend Dan. I was his secretary, and I remember it was but a day or so after the shooting till letters of sympathy began to pour in. In the first bundle which I picked up there was a big letter, the handwriting on which I recognized as that of Mr. Lincoln. The letter was very sympathetic.
“‘I know how you feel, Linder,’ it said. ‘I can understand your anger as a father, added to all the other sentiments. But may we not be in a measure to blame? We have talked about the defense of criminals before our children; about our success in defending them; have left the impression that the greater the crime, the greater the triumph of securing an acquittal. Dan knows your success as a criminal lawyer, and he depends on you, little knowing that of all cases you would be of least value in this.’
“He concluded by offering his services, an offer which touched my father to tears.
“Mr. Lincoln tried to have Dan released on bail, but Ben Boyle’s family and friends declared the wounded man would die, and feeling had grown so bitter that the judge would not grant any bail. So the case was changed to Marshall county, but as Ben finally recovered it was dismissed.”
THOUGHT OF LEARNING A TRADE.
Lincoln at one time thought seriously of learning the blacksmith’s trade. He was without means, and felt the immediate necessity of undertaking some business that would give him bread. While entertaining this project an event occurred which, in his undetermined state of mind, seemed to open a way to success in another quarter.
Reuben Radford, keeper of a small store in the village of New Salem, had incurred the displeasure of the “Clary Grove Boys,” who exercised their “regulating” prerogatives by irregularly breaking his windows. William G. Greene, a friend of young Lincoln, riding by Radford’s store soon afterward, was hailed by him, and told that he intended to sell out. Mr. Greene went into the store, and offered him at random $400 for his stock, which offer was immediately accepted.
Lincoln “happened in” the next day, and being familiar with the value of the goods, Mr. Greene proposed to him to take an inventory of the stock, to see what sort of a bargain he had made. This he did, and it was found that the goods were worth $600.
Lincoln then made an offer of $125 for his bargain, with the proposition that he and a man named Berry, as his partner, take over Greene’s notes given to Radford. Mr. Greene agreed to the arrangement, but Radford declined it, except on condition that Greene would be their security. Greene at last assented.
Lincoln was not afraid of the “Clary Grove Boys”; on the contrary, they had been his most ardent friends since the time he thrashed “Jack” Armstrong, champion bully of “The Grove”—but their custom was not heavy.
The business soon became a wreck; Greene had to not only assist in closing it up, but pay Radford’s notes as well. Lincoln afterwards spoke of these notes, which he finally made good to Greene, as “the National Debt.”
LINCOLN DEFENDS FIFTEEN MRS. NATIONS.
When Lincoln’s sympathies were enlisted in any cause, he worked like a giant to win. At one time (about 1855) he was in attendance upon court at the little town of Clinton, Ill., and one of the cases on the docket was where fifteen women from a neighboring village were defendants, they having been indicted for trespass. Their offense, as duly set forth in the indictment, was that of swooping down upon one Tanner, the keeper of a saloon in the village, and knocking in the heads of his barrels. Lincoln was not employed in the case, but sat watching the trial as it proceeded.
In defending the ladies, their attorney seemed to evince a little want of tact, and this prompted one of the former to invite Mr. Lincoln to add a few words to the jury, if he thought he could aid their cause. He was too gallant to refuse, and their attorney having consented, he made use of the following argument:
“In this case I would change the order of indictment and have it read The State vs. Mr. Whiskey, instead of The State vs. The Ladies; and touching these there are three laws: the law of self-protection; the law of the land, or statute law; and the moral law, or law of God.
“First the law of self-protection is a law of necessity, as evinced by our forefathers in casting the tea overboard and asserting their right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness: In this case it is the only defense the Ladies have, for Tanner neither feared God nor regarded man.
“Second, the law of the land, or statute law, and Tanner is recreant to both.
“Third, the moral law, or law of God, and this is probably a law for the violation of which the jury can fix no punishment.”
Lincoln gave some of his own observations on the ruinous effects of whiskey in society, and demanded its early suppression.
After he had concluded, the Court, without awaiting the return of the jury, dismissed the ladies, saying:
“Ladies, go home. I will require no bond of you, and if any fine is ever wanted of you, we will let you know.”
AVOIDED EVEN APPEARANCE OF EVIL
Frank W. Tracy, President of the First National Bank of Springfield, tells a story illustrative of two traits in Mr. Lincoln’s character. Shortly after the National banking law went into effect the First National of Springield was chartered, and Mr. Tracy wrote to Mr. Lincoln, with whom he was well acquainted in a business way, and tendered him an opportunity to subscribe for some of the stock.
In reply to the kindly offer Mr. Lincoln wrote, thanking Mr. Tracy, but at the same time declining to subscribe. He said he recognized that stock in a good National bank would be a good thing to hold, but he did not feel that he ought, as President, profit from a law which had been passed under his administration.
“He seemed to wish to avoid even the appearance of evil,” said Mr. Tracy, in telling of the incident. “And so the act proved both his unvarying probity and his unfailing policy.”
WAR DIDN’T ADMIT OF HOLIDAYS.
Lincoln wrote a letter on October 2d, 1862, in which he observed:
“I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is, but it does not admit of holidays.”
“NEUTRALITY.”
Old John Bull got himself into a precious fine scrape when he went so far as to “play double” with the North, as well as the South, during the great American Civil War. In its issue of November 14th, 1863, London “Punch” printed a rather clever cartoon illustrating the predicament Bull had created for himself. John is being lectured by Mrs. North and Mrs. South—both good talkers and eminently able to hold their own in either social conversation, parliamentary debate or political argument—but he bears it with the best grace possible. This is the way the text underneath the picture runs:
MRS. NORTH. “How about the Alabama, you wicked old man?” MRS. SOUTH: “Where’s my rams? Take back your precious consols—there!!” “Punch” had a good deal of fun with old John before it was through with him, but, as the Confederate privateer Alabama was sent beneath the waves of the ocean at Cherbourg by the Kearsarge, and Mrs. South had no need for any more rams, John got out of the difficulty without personal injury. It was a tight squeeze, though, for Mrs. North was in a fighting humor, and prepared to scratch or pull hair. The fact that the privateer Alabama, built at an English shipyard and manned almost entirely by English sailors, had managed to do about $10,000,000 worth of damage to United States commerce, was enough to make any one angry.
DAYS OF GLADNESS PAST.
After the war was well on, a patriot woman of the West urged President Lincoln to make hospitals at the North where the sick from the Army of the Mississippi could revive in a more bracing air. Among other reasons, she said, feelingly: “If you grant my petition, you will be glad as long as you live.”
With a look of sadness impossible to describe, the President said:
“I shall never be glad any more.”
WOULDN’T TAKE THE MONEY.
Lincoln always regarded himself as the friend and protector of unfortunate clients, and such he would never press for pay for his services. A client named Cogdal was unfortunate in business, and gave a note in settlement of legal fees. Soon afterward he met with an accident by which he lost a hand. Meeting Lincoln some time after on the steps of the State-House, the kind lawyer asked him how he was getting along.
“Badly enough,” replied Cogdal; “I am both broken up in business and crippled.” Then he added, “I have been thinking about that note of yours.”
Lincoln, who had probably known all about Cogdal’s troubles, and had prepared himself for the meeting, took out his pocket-book, and saying, with a laugh, “Well, you needn’t think any more about it,” handed him the note.
Cogdal protesting, Lincoln said, “Even if you had the money, I would not take it,” and hurried away.
GRANT HELD ON ALL THE TIME.
(Dispatch to General Grant, August 17th, 1864.)
“I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing.
“Hold on with a bulldog grip.”
CHEWED THE CUD IN SOLITUDE.
As a student (if such a term could be applied to Lincoln), one who did not know him might have called him indolent. He would pick up a book and run rapidly over the pages, pausing here and there.
At the end of an hour—never more than two or three hours—he would close the book, stretch himself out on the office lounge, and then, with hands under his head and eyes shut, would digest the mental food he had just taken.
“ABE’S” YANKEE INGENUITY.
War Governor Richard Yates (he was elected Governor of Illinois in 1860, when Lincoln was first elected President) told a good story at Springfield (Ill.) about Lincoln.
One day the latter was in the Sangamon River with his trousers rolled up five feet—more or less—trying to pilot a flatboat over a mill-dam. The boat was so full of water that it was hard to manage. Lincoln got the prow over, and then, instead of waiting to bail the water out, bored a hole through the projecting part and let it run out, affording a forcible illustration of the ready ingenuity of the future President.
LINCOLN PAID HOMAGE TO WASHINGTON.
The Martyr President thus spoke of Washington in the course of an address:
“Washington is the mightiest name on earth—long since the mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation.
“On that name a eulogy is expected. It cannot be.
“To add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible.
“Let none attempt it.
“In solemn awe pronounce the name, and, in its naked, deathless splendor, leave it shining on.”
STIRRED EVEN THE REPORTERS.
Lincoln’s influence upon his audiences was wonderful. He could sway people at will, and nothing better illustrates his extraordinary power than he manner in which he stirred up the newspaper reporters by his Bloomingon speech.
Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, told the story:
“It was my journalistic duty, though a delegate to the convention, to make a ‘longhand’ report of the speeches delivered for the Tribune. I did make a few paragraphs of what Lincoln said in the first eight or ten minutes, but I became so absorbed in his magnetic oratory that I forgot myself and ceased to take notes, and joined with the convention in cheering and stamping and clapping to the end of his speech.
“I well remember that after Lincoln sat down and calm had succeeded the tempest, I waked out of a sort of hypnotic trance, and then thought of my report for the paper. There was nothing written but an abbreviated introduction.
“It was some sort of satisfaction to find that I had not been ‘scooped,’ as all the newspaper men present had been equally carried away by the excitement caused by the wonderful oration and had made no report or sketch of the speech.”
WHEN “ABE” CAME IN.
When “Abe” was fourteen years of age, John Hanks journeyed from Kentucky to Indiana and lived with the Lincolns. He described “Abe’s” habits thus:
“When Lincoln and I returned to the house from work, he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn-bread, take down a book, sit down on a chair, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read.
“He and I worked barefooted, grubbed it, plowed, mowed, cradled together; plowed corn, gathered it, and shucked corn. ‘Abe’ read constantly when he had an opportunity.”
ETERNAL FIDELITY TO THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY.
During the Harrison Presidential campaign of 1840, Lincoln said, in a speech at Springfield, Illinois:
“Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was last to desert, but that I never deserted her.
“I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing.
“I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
“The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause which we believe to be just. It shall never deter me.
“If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
“Here, without contemplating consequences, before heaven, and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love; and who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take?
“Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed.
“But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so; we have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country’s freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and, adorned of our hearts in disaster, in chains, in death, we never faltered in defending.”
“ABE’S” “DEFALCATIONS.”
Lincoln could not rest for as instant under the consciousness that, even unwittingly, he had defrauded anybody. On one occasion, while clerking in Offutt’s store, at New Salem, he sold a woman a little bale of goods, amounting, by the reckoning, to $2.20. He received the money, and the woman went away.
On adding the items of the bill again to make himself sure of correctness, he found that he had taken six and a quarter cents too much.
It was night, and, closing and locking the store, he started out on foot, a distance of two or three miles, for the house of his defrauded customer, and, delivering to her the sum whose possession had so much troubled him, went home satisfied.
On another occasion, just as he was closing the store for the night, a woman entered and asked for half a pound of tea. The tea was weighed out and paid for, and the store was left for the night.
The next morning Lincoln, when about to begin the duties of the day, discovered a four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw at once that he had made a mistake, and, shutting the store, he took a long walk before breakfast to deliver the remainder of the tea.
These are very humble incidents, but they illustrate the man’s perfect conscientiousness—his sensitive honesty—better, perhaps, than they would if they were of greater moment.
HE WASN’T GUILELESS.
Leonard Swett, of Chicago, whose counsels were doubtless among the most welcome to Lincoln, in summing up Lincoln’s character, said:
“From the commencement of his life to its close I have sometimes doubted whether he ever asked anybody’s advice about anything. He would listen to everybody; he would hear everybody; but he rarely, if ever, asked for opinions.
“As a politician and as President he arrived at all his conclusions from his own reflections, and when his conclusions were once formed he never doubted but what they were right.
“One great public mistake of his (Lincoln’s) character, as generally received and acquiesced in, is that he is considered by the people of this country as a frank, guileless, and unsophisticated man. There never was a greater mistake.
“Beneath a smooth surface of candor and apparent declaration of all his thoughts and feelings he exercised the most exalted tact and wisest discrimination. He handled and moved men remotely as we do pieces upon a chess-board.
“He retained through life all the friends he ever had, and he made the wrath of his enemies to praise him. This was not by cunning or intrigue in the low acceptation of the term, but by far-seeing reason and discernment. He always told only enough of his plans and purposes to induce the belief that he had communicated all; yet he reserved enough to have communicated nothing.”
SWEET, BUT MILD REVENGE.
When the United States found that a war with Black Hawk could not be dodged, Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, issued a call for volunteers, and among the companies that immediately responded was one from Menard county, Illinois. Many of these volunteers were from New Salem and Clary’s Grove, and Lincoln, being out of business, was the first to enlist.
The company being full, the men held a meeting at Richland for the election of officers. Lincoln had won many hearts, and they told him that he must be their captain. It was an office to which he did not aspire, and for which he felt he had no special fitness; but he finally consented to be a candidate.
There was but one other candidate, a Mr. Kirkpatrick, who was one of the most influential men of the region. Previously, Kirkpatrick had been an employer of Lincoln, and was so overbearing in his treatment of the young man that the latter left him.
The simple mode of electing a captain adopted by the company was by placing the candidates apart, and telling the men to go and stand with the one they preferred. Lincoln and his competitor took their positions, and then the word was given. At least three out of every four went to Lincoln at once.
When it was seen by those who had arranged themselves with the other candidate that Lincoln was the choice of the majority of the company, they left their places, one by one, and came over to the successful side, until Lincoln’s opponent in the friendly strife was left standing almost alone.
“I felt badly to see him cut so,” says a witness of the scene.
Here was an opportunity for revenge. The humble laborer was his employer’s captain, but the opportunity was never improved. Mr. Lincoln frequently confessed that no subsequent success of his life had given him half the satisfaction that this election did.
DIDN’T TRUST THE COURT.
In one of his many stories of Lincoln, his law partner, W. H. Herndon, told this as illustrating Lincoln’s shrewdness as a lawyer:
“I was with Lincoln once and listened to an oral argument by him in which he rehearsed an extended history of the law. It was a carefully prepared and masterly discourse, but, as I thought, entirely useless. After he was through and we were walking home, I asked him why he went so far back in the history of the law. I presumed the court knew enough history.
“‘That’s where you’re mistaken,’ was his instant rejoinder. ‘I dared not just the case on the presumption that the court knows everything—in fact I argued it on the presumption that the court didn’t know anything,’ a statement, which, when one reviews the decision of our appellate courts, is not so extravagant as one would at first suppose.”
HANDSOMEST MAN ON EARTH.
One day Thaddeus Stevens called at the White House with an elderly woman, whose son had been in the army, but for some offense had been court-martialed and sentenced to death. There were some extenuating circumstances, and after a full hearing the President turned to Stevens and said: “Mr. Stevens, do you think this is a case which will warrant my interference?”
“With my knowledge of the facts and the parties,” was the reply, “I should have no hesitation in granting a pardon.”
“Then,” returned Mr. Lincoln, “I will pardon him,” and proceeded forthwith to execute the paper.
The gratitude of the mother was too deep for expression, save by her tears, and not a word was said between her and Stevens until they were half way down the stairs on their passage out, when she suddenly broke forth in an excited manner with the words:
“I knew it was a copperhead lie!”
“What do you refer to, madam?” asked Stevens.
“Why, they told me he was an ugly-looking man,” she replied, with vehemence. “He is the handsomest man I ever saw in my life.”
THAT COON CAME DOWN.
“Lincoln’s Last Warning” was the title of a cartoon which appeared in “Harper’s Weekly,” on October 11, 1862. Under the picture was the text:
“Now if you don’t come down I’ll cut the tree from under you.”
This illustration was peculiarly apt, as, on the 1st of January, 1863, President Lincoln issued his great Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in the United States forever free. “Old Abe” was a handy man with the axe, he having split many thousands of rails with its keen edge. As the “Slavery Coon” wouldn’t heed the warning, Lincoln did cut the tree from under him, and so he came down to the ground with a heavy thump.
This Act of Emancipation put an end to the notion of the Southern slave holders that involuntary servitude was one of the “sacred institutions” on the Continent of North America. It also demonstrated that Lincoln was thoroughly in earnest when he declared that he would not only save the Union, but that he meant what he said in the speech wherein he asserted, “This Nation cannot exist half slave and half free.”
WROTE “PIECES” WHEN VERY YOUNG.
At fifteen years of age “Abe” wrote “pieces,” or compositions, and even some doggerel rhyme, which he recited, to the great amusement of his playmates.
One of his first compositions was against cruelty to animals. He was very much annoyed and pained at the conduct of the boys, who were in the habit of catching terrapins and putting coals of fire on their backs, which thoroughly disgusted Abraham.
“He would chide us,” said “Nat” Grigsby, “tell us it was wrong, and would write against it.”
When eighteen years old, “Abe” wrote a “piece” on “National Politics,” and it so pleased a lawyer friend, named Pritchard, that the latter had it printed in an obscure paper, thereby adding much to the author’s pride. “Abe” did not conceal his satisfaction. In this “piece” he wrote, among other things:
“The American government is the best form of government for an intelligent people. It ought to be kept sound, and preserved forever, that general education should be fostered and carried all over the country; that the Constitution should be saved, the Union perpetuated and the laws revered, respected and enforced.”
“TRY TO STEER HER THROUGH.”
John A. Logan and a friend of Illinois called upon Lincoln at Willard’s Hotel, Washington, February 23d, the morning of his arrival, and urged a vigorous, firm policy.
Patiently listening, Lincoln replied seriously but cheerfully:
“As the country has placed me at the helm of the ship, I’ll try to steer her through.”
GRAND, GLOOMY AND PECULIAR.
Lincoln was a marked and peculiar young man. People talked about him. His studious habits, his greed for information, his thorough mastery of the difficulties of every new position in which he was placed, his intelligence on all matters of public concern, his unwearying good-nature, his skill in telling a story, his great athletic power, his quaint, odd ways, his uncouth appearance—all tended to bring him in sharp contrast with the dull mediocrity by which he was surrounded.
Denton Offutt, his old employer, said, after having had a conversation with Lincoln, that the young man “had talent enough in him to make a President.”
ON THE WAY TO GETTYSBURG.
When Lincoln was on his way to the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, an old gentleman told him that his only son fell on Little Round Top at Gettysburg, and he was going to look at the spot. Mr. Lincoln replied: “You have been called on to make a terrible sacrifice for the Union, and a visit to that spot, I fear, will open your wounds afresh.
“But, oh, my dear sir, if we had reached the end of such sacrifices, and had nothing left for us to do but to place garlands on the graves of those who have already fallen, we could give thanks even amidst our tears; but when I think of the sacrifices of life yet to be offered, and the hearts and homes yet to be made desolate before this dreadful war is over, my heart is like lead within me, and I feel at times like hiding in deep darkness.” At one of the stopping places of the train, a very beautiful child, having a bunch of rosebuds in her hand, was lifted up to an open window of the President’s car. “Floweth for the President.” The President stepped to the window, took the rosebuds, bent down and kissed the child, saying, “You are a sweet little rosebud yourself. I hope your life will open into perpetual beauty and goodness.”
STOOD UP THE LONGEST.
There was a rough gallantry among the young people; and Lincoln’s old comrades and friends in Indiana have left many tales of how he “went to see the girls,” of how he brought in the biggest back-log and made the brightest fire; of how the young people, sitting around it, watching the way the sparks flew, told their fortunes.
He helped pare apples, shell corn and crack nuts. He took the girls to meeting and to spelling school, though he was not often allowed to take part in the spelling-match, for the one who “chose first” always chose “Abe” Lincoln, and that was equivalent to winning, as the others knew that “he would stand up the longest.”
A MORTIFYING EXPERIENCE.
A lady reader or elocutionist came to Springfield in 1857. A large crowd greeted her. Among other things she recited “Nothing to Wear,” a piece in which is described the perplexities that beset “Miss Flora McFlimsy” in her efforts to appear fashionable.
In the midst of one stanza in which no effort is made to say anything particularly amusing, and during the reading of which the audience manifested the most respectful silence and attention, some one in the rear seats burst out with a loud, coarse laugh, a sudden and explosive guffaw.
It startled the speaker and audience, and kindled a storm of unsuppressed laughter and applause. Everybody looked back to ascertain the cause of the demonstration, and were greatly surprised to find that it was Mr. Lincoln.
He blushed and squirmed with the awkward diffidence of a schoolboy. What caused him to laugh, no one was able to explain. He was doubtless wrapped up in a brown study, and recalling some amusing episode, indulged in laughter without realizing his surroundings. The experience mortified him greatly.
NO HALFWAY BUSINESS.
Soon after Mr. Lincoln began to practice law at Springfield, he was engaged in a criminal case in which it was thought there was little chance of success. Throwing all his powers into it, he came off victorious, and promptly received for his services five hundred dollars. A legal friend, calling upon him the next morning, found him sitting before a table, upon which his money was spread out, counting it over and over.
“Look here, Judge,” said he. “See what a heap of money I’ve got from this case. Did you ever see anything like it? Why, I never had so much money in my life before, put it all together.” Then, crossing his arms upon the table, his manner sobering down, he added: “I have got just five hundred dollars; if it were only seven hundred and fifty, I would go directly and purchase a quarter section of land, and settle it upon my old step-mother.”
His friend said that if the deficiency was all he needed, he would loan him the amount, taking his note, to which Mr. Lincoln instantly acceded.
His friend then said:
“Lincoln, I would do just what you have indicated. Your step-mother is getting old, and will not probably live many years. I would settle the property upon her for her use during her lifetime, to revert to you upon her death.”
With much feeling, Mr. Lincoln replied:
“I shall do no such thing. It is a poor return at best for all the good woman’s devotion and fidelity to me, and there is not going to be any halfway business about it.” And so saying, he gathered up his money and proceeded forthwith to carry his long-cherished purpose into execution.