LINCOLN'S BOOK CRITICISM. (continued 3)

AN UNCONVENTIONAL ORDER.

On going over the minor orders, riders, and corrections of the President, it will be seen that he never succumbed to conforming with the stale and set phrases of the civil-service documents. For an instance of his unquenchable humor read the following discharge:

Two brothers, Smiths, of Boston, had been arrested, held, and persecuted for a long period by a military tribunal. The charge was defrauding the government. The hue and cry about the cheating contractors called for a victim. But the Chief Executive on perusing the testimony concluded that the defendants were guiltless. He wrote the subsequent release:

"Whereas, Franklin W. and J. C. Smith had transactions with the Navy Department to the amount of one and a quarter millions of dollars; and, whereas, they had the chance to steal a million, and were charged with stealing twenty-two hundred dollars--and the question now is stealing a hundred--I don't believe they stole anything at all! Therefore, the record and findings are disapproved--declared null and void--and the defendants are fully discharged."

"IT OCCURS TO ME THAT I AM COMMANDER!"

To the prairie man the climate of Washington would be almost tropical. Nevertheless, it participates of American meteorological variability, as "Old Probability" would admit.

One night, Lincoln, coming out of his rooms at the Executive Mansion to make his nocturnal round, finishing with the call for the latest despatches at garrison headquarters, noticed as the fierce gale shook him and scourged him with sleet, that a soldier was contending with the storm just outside the outer door.

"Young man," said he, turning sharply to him, "you have got a cold job to-night. Step inside and guard there."

The soldier stoutly contended--for the colloquy became an argument by Lincoln's delight in debate. He persisted that he was posted there by orders and must not budge save by a superior countermand.

"Hold on, there!" cried Lincoln, pleased at the arguer supplying him with a decisive weapon; "it occurs to me that I am commander-in-chief! and so, I order you to go inside!"

COMPLIMENTS IS ALL THEY DO PAY!

A paymaster introduced to the President by the United States district marshal, remarked with independence noticeable in the sect: "I have no official business with you, sir--I only called to pay my compliments!"

"I understand," was the retort; "and from the soldiers' complaints, I think that is all you gentlemen do pay!"

BAIL THE POTOMAC WITH A SPOON.

There is as pathetic a picture as the old sated Marquis of Queensberry (Thackeray's Steyne and history's "Old Q.") murmuring as he gazed from his castle window on the unsurpassed view of the Thames Valley, "Oh, this cursed river running on all the day!" in President Lincoln watching the broad Potomac where all was so quiet, and yet the hidden and watchful enemy lined the other bank. A petitioner hemmed him in a corner of the room with this sight, and poured on him the bucket of his woes. The at last irritated worm turned on him, and cried:

"My poor man! go away! do go away! I cannot meddle in your case. I could as easily bail the Potomac with a teaspoon as attend to all the details of the army!"

"WE SHALL BEAT THEM, MY SON!"

George W. Curtis, New York editor, called on the President in the first winter of the war, with the Illinoisian's friend, Judge Arnold. He said that the official wore a sad, weary, and anxious look, and spoke with a softened, touching voice. But he added to his good-by at the door in shaking hands, with paternal kindness and profound conviction:

"We shall beat them, my son! we shall beat them!"

"LITTLE FOR SO BIG A BUSINESS."

Before the war the museums of the Eastern States were regaled by an "Infant Drummer." This lad, Harry W. Stowman, at the age of seven or eight, was a proficient on the drum. He was seen by this editor, executing solos of great difficulty, and accompanying the orchestra with variations on his unpromising instrument, which musicians praised and in which he avoided monotony with precocious talent. Grown up, still a rare drummer, he was attached to the Germantown Hospital as post drummer. At the first inauguration he was with the band and noticed by the President. With his habit of applauding the young, the latter spoke to him, commended his playing, and remarked:

"You are a very little man to be in this big business!" He took him up, kissed him, and paternally set him down, drum and all.

Mr. Stowman lived to the age of forty with this pretty memory.

NOT "SHOULDER-STRAPS," BUT HARDTACK.

At a military function when Lincoln presented a new commander to a legion, one of the soldiers burst out with that irreverence distinguishing the American volunteer:

"It is not shoulder-straps (the officers' insignia), but hardtack that we want!"

Hardtack was the nickname for the disused ship bread turned over to the army by remorseless contractors.

"MARYLAND A GOOD STATE TO MOVE FROM!"

Thurlow Weed, prominent "wire-puller," presented as a preferable puppet to Montgomery Blair his choice, Henry Winter Davis, upon which the President said:

"Davis? Judge David Davis put you up to this. He has Davis on the brain. A Maryland man who wants to get out! Maryland must be a good State to move from. Weed, did you ever hear, in this connection, of the witness in court asked to state his age? He said sixty. As he was on the face of it much older, but persisted, the court admonished him, saying:

"'The court knows you to be older than sixty!'

"'Oh, I understand now,' owned up the old fellow. 'You are thinking of the ten years I spent in Maryland; that was so much time lost and did not count!'"

DON'T SWAP HORSES CROSSING A STREAM.

The setting up and the bowling over of the generals commanding the army defending Washington from McDowell at Bull Run to Meade at Gettysburg, resembles a grim game at tenpins. The President, who tried to find a professional captain to relieve him of his responsibility as nominally war-chief of the national forces, therefore smiled sarcastically when the ninety-ninth deputation came to suggest still another aspirant to be the new Napoleon, and said to it:

"Gentlemen, your request and proposition remind me of two gentlemen in Kentucky.

"The flat lands there bordering on the rivers are subject to inundations, so the fordable creek becomes in an instant a broad lake, deep and rapidly running. These two riders were talking the common topic--in that famous Blue Grass region where fillies and fill-es, as the voyageur from Canada said in his broken English, are unsurpassable for grace and beauty. Each fell to expatiating upon the good qualities of his steed, and this dialogue was so animated and engrossing they approached a ford without being conscious of outer matters. There was heavy rain in the highlands and an ominous sound in the dampening air. They entered the water still arguing. Then, at midway, while they came to the agreement to exchange horses, with no 'boot,' since each conceded the value of the animals, the river rose. In a twinkling the two horses were floundering, and the riders, taken for once off their balance, lost stirrup and seat, and the four creatures, separated, were struggling for a footing in the boiling stream. Away streaked the horses, buried in foam, three or four miles down, while the men scrambled out upon the new edge.

"Gentlemen," concluded the President, drawing his moral with his provoking imperturbability, "those men looked at each other, as they dripped, and said with the one voice: 'Ain't this a lesson? Don't swap horses crossing a stream!'"--(Heard by Superintendent Tinker, war telegrapher.)

"NO PLACING THORNS IN THE SIDE OF MY WORST ENEMY!"

The Free Constitution of Maryland was the work of Lincoln. His and its supporters made a party to go to Washington and congratulate the President on the victory. They had a band and serenaded him in the White House until he came forth. But he said, to the dampening of their ardor, when the cheering had subsided:

"My friends, I appreciate this honor very highly, but I am very sorry to see you rejoice over the defeat of those opposed to us. It is furthest from my desire to place a thorn in any one's side, though he be my worst enemy."--(Recited by Mr. Hy. G. Willis, Baltimore, in the Sun of that city.)

THE LINCOLN PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

This historical document promised at one time to be a problem like the Sibilline Leaves or Czar Peter's will. But Secretary H. C. Whitney declares that it existed as he had it laid before him by the strategist.

"Running his long forefinger down the map of Virginia, he said: 'We must drive them away from here (Manassas Gap, where indeed were fights over the keystone), and clear them out of this part of the State, so that they cannot threaten them here (Washington) and get into Maryland.' (Unfortunately, the rebels did threaten Washington right on and entered Maryland and Pennsylvania, as late as July, 1863, and by a cavalry raid, a year later.)

"'We must keep up a good and thorough blockade of their ports. We must march an army into East Tennessee and liberate the Union sentiment there. (This was not finally done till the end of 1864.)

"'Finally, we must rely on the (Southern) people growing tired, and saying to their leaders: "We have had enough of this thing, and will bear it no longer."'"

In 1862, a year after, Lincoln says to McClellan: "We have distinct and different plans for a movement of the Army of the Potomac: yours to be down the Chesapeake, etc.; mine, to move directly to the point on the railroads southwest of Manassas. (He hugs his original idea.)... In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more difficult by your plan than mine?" You see the prudence in him esteemed ignorant and consequently blindly rash. All this amounted to nothing when the President trusted fully to Grant as his lieutenant.

THE COMMANDER SHOULD OBEY ORDERS.

The President at Fort Stevens was the mark for a rebel battery. A colonel in command was diffident about ordering the superior about, but he was averse to letting the "dare" bring on a fatality, as the sharpshooters had an easy butt in the Lincoln exceptional figure. So he took the advice of Mr. Registrar Chittenden, on the staff, and bade the President retire, or he would move him by a file of men.

"And you would do quite right, my boy!" acquiesced the chief. "I should be the last man to set an example of disobedience."

THE IDLERS EQUALED THE EFFECTIVES.

During a review of General Howard's corps on the Rappahannock, in April, 1863, President Lincoln noticed, whether his eyes were "unmilitary or not," that a very numerous mass of men were spectators, though wearing a semisoldierly look and clothes. They were, in fact, the inevitable hangers-on of an army, the more in number, as the escaped slaves were welcomed by the soldiers, as they made them do their dirty work. The commanding general explained that they were "the cooks, the bottle-washers, and the nigger waiters." They had come out to see the President.

"That review yonder," returned Lincoln gently, as he smiled, "is about as big as ours!"--(By General O. O. Howard.)

REST!

Sitting before his desk in his office, at the White House, Lincoln quaintly uttered: "I wish George Washington or some of those old patriots were here in my place so that I could have a little rest."--(Heard by General Viele.)

"I CAN BEAR CENSURE, BUT NOT INSULT!"

An army officer appeared before the President with a statement of his defense against a sentence of cashiering. He was told that his own paper did not warrant the superior interference. But he showed up twice more, repeating the plea and the version of his own preparation.

At the continued repulse he blurted out:

"I see, Mr. President, that you are not disposed to do me justice!"

If Lincoln was the embodiment of any one virtue it was justice to all. At this slur he sprang up and put the fellow out of the door by a lift of his collar, saying:

"Never show yourself in this room again! I can bear censure, but not insult!"

A BATTLE OF ROSES.

At every reverse to the Unionists, the more or less secret sympathizers with the seceders reiterated the cry that gentler measures should be used against "our erring brothers." To one such pleader, the President severely, but humorously, responded, in writing:

"Would you have me drop the war where it is, or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose-water?"

Mr. Lincoln may or may not have said this and thus--but he certainly wrote it, for which see his letter to C. Bullitt, July 28, 1862. Guns of elder squirts are mentioned by his dear Shakespeare.

"HELP ME LET GO!"

The year 1862 had its gold in the victories of Murfreesboro and Perryville in the West, but in the neighborhood of the capital General Burnside's defeat at Fredericksburg, while his supporters counted on his justifying his superseding McClellan, clouded all Washington. The staff-officer [Footnote: An account says it was Governor Curtin in person.] who brought the painful news saw that the President was so saddened that he faltered an apology for the nature of his mission.

"I wish, Mr. President, that I might be the bearer of good instead of bad news--I wish I brought the intelligence by which you could conquer or get rid of these rebellious States!"

His hearer smiled at the essay to cheer him, who believed he would "never sleep again," and related, with a view to enliven him also, the story of "Help me let go."

The version, circulating viva voce, ran as follows:

"That reminds me of the camp where a bear suddenly made his appearance and scattered the party. All save one shinned up trees, or got behind rocks, and that one meeting the animal head on, before he could turn, seized bruin by the ears and held on 'like grim death to a dead nigger.'

"Recovering from their fright the hunters came out of ambush and were unable to do anything but laugh at the fix their friend was in.

"'You ain't mastered, are you?' asked they.

"'Not licked, but I want you to help me let go!'"

Mr. Lincoln expressed himself when he said he was slow to learn and slow to forget; the two qualities are redeemed by his wonderful ease and quickness in remembering. To quote well is good, but to quote fitly is better. His intimates noticed that he would reecho a story--a simile or a tag--and so neatly apply it that it seemed fresh on the second use. He was an admirable actor, though not appreciated in that light; for he could reappear in the same part without palling. Hence one often meets his stories, as, for instance, this one. His life law partner, Herndon, tells it as used toward a petty judge, in Illinois, of inferior ability to Lincoln's. It was a murder case, and this bully on the bench kept ruling against Herndon and Lincoln. A material point was ruled adversely just at the refreshment recess. Lincoln withdrew sore, as he believed that the judge was personally controverting his positions. He avowed his own feelings, and announced:

"I have determined to crowd the court to the wall and regain my position before night."

As Judge Herndon was a bystander, his account of the further proceedings must be as faithful as veracious:

"At the reassembling of court, Mr. Lincoln rose to read a few authorities in support of his position, keeping within the bounds of propriety just far enough to avoid a reprimand. He characterized the continuous rulings against him as not only unjust but foolish, and, figuratively speaking, peeled the court from head to foot.... Lincoln was alternately furious and eloquent, and after pursuing the court with broad facts and pointed inquiries in rapid succession, he made use of this homely incident to clinch his argument."

(The tale is given as about a wild boar. In either phrase, the point is that the judge was attached to his Tartar and wanted to be let go!)

"The prosecution tried in vain to break Lincoln down," concludes Mr. Herndon, "and the judge, badgered effectually by Lincoln's masterly arraignment of law and fact, pretended to see the error of his former position, and finally reversed his decision in his tormentor's favor. Lincoln saw his triumph and surveyed a situation of which he was master."

SPLITTING THE DIFFERENCE.

Upon the Western Virginia Stateship Bill passing in Congress, an opponent, Mr. Carlisle, ran to the President. He urged him to veto the bill.

"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll split the difference and say nothing about it!"--(Frank Moore.)

IN THE INCA'S POSITION.

Long after the President reconsidered his hasty surmise that the impending war was "artificial crisis," Congress continued to waver, and no one put forward a definite and working policy for the head who avowed that he never had one. In his despondency and lonesomeness, he welcomed an old friend from his State, who, however, like the rest, had his frets and rubs to seek solace for.

"You know better than any man living that, from my boyhood up, my ambition was to be President. I am, at least, President of one part of the divided country; but look at me! With a fire in my front and one in my rear to contend with, and not receiving that cordial cooperative support from Congress, reasonably expected, with an active and formidable enemy in the field threatening the very life-blood of the government, my position is anything but on a bed of roses."

"BLIND" FORTUNE.

A soldier shot in the head so as to be deprived of sight in both eyes left the Carver Hospital, Washington, and blundered in crossing the avenue. At that very moment the President's carriage was coming along to the Soldiers' Home from the mansion. The coach alone would probably have not brought any casualty upon the unfortunate young invalid, but it was again surrounded by one of the cavalry detachments, which Lincoln insisted on being withdrawn, but it was replaced, for the time.

The soldier hearing this double clatter of hoofs became bewildered, and stood still in the midroad, or, if anything, inclined toward the thundering danger. The cavalry chargers, trained to avoid hurting men--for a rider might be thrown--eluded contact, and the coachman neatly pulled aside. In the next moment, in a cloud of dust, the President, leaning out of the window, to ascertain the cause of the abrupt stop, saw the poor young soldier by his side. Lincoln threw out a hand to seize him by the arm, and reassure him of safety by the vibrating clutch. Then, perceiving the nature of the affair, he asked in a voice trembling with emotion about the man's regiment and disablement. The man was from the Northwest--Michigan. Lumbermen--and they are of the woods woody out there--and Lincoln believed in "the ax as the enlarger of our borders"--are brotherly. The next day the soldier was commissioned lieutenant with perpetual leave, but full pay.--(By the veteran reservist, H. W. Knight, of the escort.)

LITTLE DAVID AND THE STONE FOR GOLIATH.

In the spring, 1862, spies and foreign officers who had seen the rebel ram Merrimac being built at Norfolk, reported her as formidable. The United States Galena, our first ironclad, was a failure. There was no vessel of the kind to deal with the monster save Ericsson's floating battery, ready for sea in March, called the Monitor, as a warning to Great Britain, expected to interfere on behalf of the South and raise the blockade over the cotton ports. This craft with a revolving turret was just as much of a new idea as its prototype.

On March 8, the Merrimac came out of Norfolk and ran down the Cumberland sloop of war; blew the Congress to splinters, and compelled her being blown up to save her from the enemy; the Minnesota was run aground to prevent being rammed. The victor returned to her dock to make ready for a fresh onslaught. The effect was profound; it seemed no exaggeration to suppose that the irresistible conqueror would pass through the United States fleet at Hampton Roads and, speeding along the coast, reduce New York to the most onerous terms or to ashes.

On Sunday, the ninth, the Monitor arrived after a sea passage, showing she rode too low for ocean navigation. Though in no fit state for battle, no time was allowed her, as the Merrimac ran out to exult over the ruins of the encounter. The Monitor threw herself in her way, bore her broadside without injury, and her shock with impunity, but on the other hand hurled her extremely heavy ball in, under her water-line. The ram backed out, and, wheeling and putting on full steam, returned to her haven. She was, it appears, too low to cross the bar to go up to Richmond, and was not ocean-going; she was blown up when Yorktown was evacuated by the Confederates in May, 1862.

The President had said of her defeater, to some naval officers: "I think she will be the veritable sling with the stone to smite the Philistine Merrimac."

LINCOLN'S CHEESE-BOX ON A RAFT.

There is a chapter yet to be published upon iron-clad war-ships, as introduced practically in the Civil War. To the Southerners is due the innovation on a fair scale, though the experiments were not at all profitably demonstrative. Upon rumors that the enemy were building the novelties of iron-cased vessels, the Federal government responded by voting money--and throwing it away upon a fiasco. Meanwhile, the others had razeed a frigate, the Merrimac, and upon an angular roof laid railroad-iron to make her shot-proof. Stories of her likelihood to be a terror, especially as she was stated by spies to be seaworthy, inspired the Americanized Swedish naval engineer, Ericsson, to build a turret-ship. The Naval Construction Board unanimously rebuffed the innovator. Luckily, President Lincoln became interested as a flat-boat builder, in his youth. He took up the inventor and the design. He scoffed at the idea that the man had not planned thoroughly, saying, as to the weight of the armor sinking the hull:

"Out West, in boat-building, we figured out the carrying power to a nicety."

His championship earned the Monitor the name of Lincoln's "cheese-box on a raft."

The assistant secretary of the navy, knowing all the facts, observes:

"I withhold no credit from Captain John Ericsson, her inventor, but I know the country is principally indebted to President Lincoln for the construction of this vessel, and for the success of the trial to Captain Worden."--(Captain Fox, Ericsson's adviser, confirms this credit.)

NO "DUTCH COURAGE."

After the miraculous intervention of the Ericsson Monitor, the President took a party aboard to inspect the little champion which had saved the fleet and, perhaps, the capital, where the captain received them. He apologized for the limited accommodation, and for the lack of the traditional lemon and necessary attributes for a presidential visit. But the teetotaler chief merrily replied:

"Some uncharitable persons say that old Bourbon valor inspires our generals in the field, but it is plain that Dutch courage was not needed on board of the Monitor!"

"IF I HAD AS MUCH MONEY AND WAS AS BADLY SKEERED----"

In March, 1862, after her terrifying exploits, the Merrimac ram was reported to have escaped to sea and was seeking fresh prey to devour. The Eastern seaports were in a panic. A deputation of New York's merchant princes, bullion barons, and plutocrats generally, representing "a hundred millions," was the rumor heralding their "rush" visit to the capital, arrived at the White House.

The spokesman faltered that the great metropolis was in peril, that treasures were involved by the apprehension, and that, in brief, the government ought to take measures to defend the Empire City from the spite of this irresistible ocean-terror.

At the conclusion, the patient hearer responded:

"Well, gentlemen, the government has at present no vessel which can sink this Merrimac. (They were not, for state reasons, to know what the sly fox had up his sleeve.) The government is pretty poor; its credit is not good; its legal-tender notes are worth only forty cents on your Wall Street; and we have to pay you a high rate of interest on our loans. Now, if I were in your place, and had as much money as you represent, and was as badly skeered as you say you are--I'd go right back to New York and build some war-vessels and present them to the government."--(Authenticated by Schuyler Colfax, afterward vice-president under General Grant; and by Judge Davis, who presented the delegation.)

"IT PLEASES HER, AND IT DON'T HURT ME."

April, 1862, closed brilliantly for the Union, as New Orleans was captured. General Porter Phelps issued a proclamation which freed the slaves. As on previous occasions, when this bomb was brought out, the President had directed its being stifled and reserved for his occasion, there was wonder that he took no official notice of the premature flash. Taken to task by a friendly critic for his odd omission, he deigned to reply:

"Well, I feel about it a good deal like that big, burly, good-natured canal laborer who had a little waspy bit of a wife, in the habit of beating him. One day she put him out of the house and switched him up and down the street. A friend met him a day or two after, and rebuked him with the words:

"'Tom, as you know, I have always stood up for you, but I am not going to do so any longer. Any man may stand for a bullyragging by his wife, but when he takes a switching from her right out on the public highway, he deserves to be horsewhipped.'

"Tom looked up with a wink on his broad face, and, slapping the interferer on the back with a leg-of-mutton fist, rejoined:

"'Why, drop it! It pleases her and it don't hurt me!'"

"LET HIM SQUEAL IF HE WORKS."

One of the Northern war governors was admirably loyal and devoted to the reunion, but he was set on doing things his own way, and protested every time he was called on for men or material. Lincoln saw that he was willing, and was only like the lady who "methinks protests too much." So he told Secretary Stanton, who laid before him the objections:

"Never mind! These despatches do not mean anything. Go right ahead. The governor reminds me of a boy I knew at a launching. He was a small boy, chosen to fit the hollow in the midst of the ways where he should lie down, after knocking out the king-dog, which holds the ship on the stocks, when all other checks are removed. The boy did everything right, but yelled as if he was being murdered every time the keel rushed over him in the channel. I thought the hide was being peeled from his back, but he wasn't hurt a mite.

"The shipyard-master told me that the boy was always chosen for the job, doing his work well and never being hurt, but that he always squealed in that way.

"Now, that's the way with our governor; make up your mind that he is not hurt and that he is doing the work all right, and pay no attention to his squealing."

To his confidant, General Viele, the President said:

"We cannot afford to quarrel with the governors of the loyal States about collateral issues. We want their soldiers."

BRIGADIERS CHEAP--CHARGERS COSTLY.

The news was transmitted to the Executive that a brigadier-general and his escort of cavalry had been "gobbled up," the current and expressive term, by rebel raiders, near Fairfax Court-house, close enough to resound the echoes of the affray.

"I am sorry of the loss of the horses," deplored the President. "I mean that I can make a brigadier-general any day--but those horses cost the government a hundred and twenty-five to fifty dollars a head!"

TO CURE SINGING IN THE HEAD.

The key to the trammels which bore upon the several generals of the Army of the Potomac is found in the fears of the inhabitants of the capital that at the least weakness in its defenders, there would be a shifting of the two governments, and the Richmond one would replace that at Washington. [Footnote: This seems unlikely now, but General Lee and many competent judges clung to the belief that, had his General Early held his position at Gettysburg, Jefferson Davis, and not Abraham Lincoln, would have occupied Washington's seat--for a time, anyway! But IF--the story of the Civil War is studded with "Ifs."] But the navy was not considered in this relation. Hence, there was a proposition to draw the rebel forces from the North, by threatening the Southern seaports with naval attacks, and descents of the tars and marines. A deputation visited the President with this project. He listened to its unfolding with his proverbial patient attention, and rejoined:

"This reminds me of the case of a girl out our way, troubled with a singing in the head. All the remedies having been uselessly tried, a plain, common horse-sense sort of a fellow (he bowed to the deputation) was called in.

"'The cure is simple,' he said; 'what is called by sympathy--make a plaster of psalm tunes and apply to the feet; it will draw the singing down and out!'"--(Repeated by Frank Carpenter's "Recollections.")

BOWING TO THE BOY OF BATTLES.

Congressman W. D. Kelley wished to procure the admittance of a youth into the Naval School. Though a lad he had "shown the mettle of a man" on two serious occasions, while belonging to the gunboat Ottawa. The President has the right to send three candidates to the school yearly, who have served a year in the naval service. Thrilled by the recital of the youth's heroic conduct, the President wrote to the secretary of the navy to have the boy put on the list of his appointees. But the subject was found short of the age required. He would not be fourteen until September of that year, and it was but July.

Lincoln had the hero appear before him. He admired him frankly and altered the order so as to suit the later date. He bade the boy go home and have "a good time" during the two months, as about the last holiday he would get. The President had reconsidered his first impression that the "disturbance" was but "an artificial excitement."

"And that's the boy who did so gallantly in those two great battles!" he mused; "why, I feel that I should bow to him, and not he to me."--(Authority: Congressman W. D. Kelley; the person was Willie Bladen, U. S. N.)

WHEN WASHINGTON WAS ALL ONE TAVERN.

As men wining with Mars expect to sup with Pluto, the drinking at the capital during the war was horrifying. The bars were overflowing with officers, and while, as "Orpheus C. Kerr" was saying of the civil-service corps, that spilling red ink was very different from spilling red blood, the novices in uniform were staining their new coats with port. Coming out of the West with the unique recommendation, "This gentleman from Kentucky never drinks," President Lincoln had only the American standby, the ice-water pitcher, on his sideboard. And up to the last, even when the jubilation upon the war's close made many a stopper fly out of the tabooed bottle, he could say: "My example never belied the position I took when I was a young man." So he could reply to a New England women's temperance deputation, probably believing the caricaturists who pictured "Old Abe" mint-juleping with the eagle.

"They would be rejoiced if they only knew how much I have tried to remedy this great evil." Indeed, he was still "meddling" when he wrote and spoke against drunken habits in the army, especially among the officers.

"BREAK THE CRITTER WHERE SLIM!"

Lincoln's letters to his generals would be a revelation of character if it were not already famed. He warns "Fighting Joe" Hooker, in June, 1863, "not to get entangled on the Rappahannock, like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to give one way or kick the other." Later: "Fight Lee, too, when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him--and fret him!" Finally: "If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the critter must be slim somewhere; could you not break him there?"

HOW GET HIM OUT?

During the avalanche of plans to conduct the suppression of the rebellion, a genius proposed what afterward seemed a forecast for Sherman's march to the sea. But at the time, Lincoln saw in it merely a desperate venture which would detail a rescue-party much more important.

"That reminds me," he said, with his whimsical smile, "of a cooper out my way, new at the trade and much annoyed by the head falling in as he was hooping in the staves around it. But the bright idea occurred to him to put his boy in to hold up the cover. Only when the job was completed by this inner support, the new problem rose: how to get the boy out?

"Your plan is feasible, sir; but how are you to get the boy out?"

(The story was originally credited to a Chinese cooper, to whom modern caskmaking was a mystery.)

"A PLEASURE TO PRESIDE, AT LAST!"

On the 4th of March, 1863, when Congress was closing the session, President Lincoln gave away the bride at a marriage ceremony held--by his invitation--in the House of Representatives' chamber. This seems a singular and high honor to the couple. Their preeminence and the function being acclaimed by all the notables connected with the field and the forum in the capital, was a characteristic testimonial to the comforters whose service to the soldier was inestimable. The pair were John A. Fowle and Elida Rumsey, the man from Boston, the lady from New York. They were both attendants on the hospitals at the front, when their acquaintance verged into community, and this eventful matrimony. Lincoln had met both, in his continuous calls at the hospitals, and offered the west wing of the Capitol building for the wedding. He gave away the bride, and in the records figure his name and those of the illustrious witnesses. He gave a huge basket of the finest flowers from the White House conservatory. He stayed to witness the dedication of the Soldier's Library, founded by Mr. Fowle, who had seen the arrant want of reading-matter by our soldiers--so few being illiterate. At the President's hint, Congress granted the ground for the library, but the Pension Office now occupies the site.

Sixty-three was a dark year, and the President might well say on this typical incident, during a time there was little marrying, it is for once a pleasure to preside.

ON THE LORD'S SIDE.

On a pastor assuring the President that "the Lord is on our side!" he replied:

"I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side."

"TO CANAAN!"

This hymn plays quite a part in the music of the Civil War. There is a negro variation--"Canaan's fair and happy land," given to the old hymn, "Canaan's happy shore," which, better known by its chorus: "Say, brothers, will you meet us?" and turned by the soldiers into the grand "John Brown's body's moldering in the grave, but his soul is marching on," was paraphrased by Julia Ward Howe into a "battle hymn." And Holmes wrote "To Canaan," relative to the first levy. And to top these, the Southerners had a parody on the "Old John Brown," also called "Lincoln Going to Canaan."

"GOING TO CANAAN!"

Although the South is a poetic country, no bard wrote any "Marseillaise Hymn" on that side. One of the few effusions bidding tolerably for publicity was "Lincoln Going to Canaan," a parody on the numerous negro camp-meeting lays in which Lincoln was hailed as the coming Moses. This burlesque was laid before Mr. Lincoln, he taking the grim relish in hits at him, caricatures and sallies, which great men never spurn.

"Going to Canaan," he (is reported to have) said. "Going to cane 'em, I expect!"

THE FOX APPOINTED PAYMASTER.

The President came into the telegraph-office of the White House, laughing. He had picked up a child's book in his son "Tad's" room and looked at it. It was a story of a motherly hen, struggling to raise her brood to lead honest and useful lives; but in her efforts she was greatly annoyed by a mischievous fox. She had given him many lectures on his wicked ways, and--said the President: "I thought I would turn over to the finis, and see how they came out. This is what it said:

"'And the fox became a good fox, and was appointed paymaster in the army.' I think it very funny that I should have appointed him a paymaster. I wonder who he is?"

Such inability to distinguish one officer as "good" does not speak highly for the eradication of the soldiers' prejudice for the gentry.--(Superintendent Tinker.)

RISKING THE DICTATORSHIP.

Every one of the generals leading the Army of the Potomac was accused of the "longing for the Presidency," which placed the occupant in a peculiar predicament. Of General "Joe" Hooker, it was said in the press and in the Washington hotels that he was the "Man on Horseback," and would, at the final success of clearing out the rebel beleaguers, set up as dictator. Hence the letter which Lincoln wrote to him:

"I have heard in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command of the Army of the Potomac. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship!"

It was April, 1863, Hooker issued the stereotyped address full of confidence on taking command, advanced, and withdrew his army after the repulse by Lee. All he scored was the death of "Stonewall" Jackson, Lee's right hand, and that was an accident. As Lee invaded Maryland, all hopes of Hooker's dictatorship were dispersed in the battle smoke penetrating too far North to be pleasant incense to fallen heroes.

A STAGE IN THE CEASELESS MARCH ONWARD TO VICTORY.

Veterans will remember the peculiar effect, on a forced march, of the younger or less-enduring comrade falling asleep as to all but his eyes and the muscles employed, but stepping out and apparently sustained only by the touching of elbows in the lurching from the ruts in the obliterated road. On the night of the stunning news of the last conflict at Chancellorsville, Lincoln could derive no comfort from later intelligence. Late at night General Halleck, commanding the capital, and Secretary Stanton left him unconsoled. Then his secretary, as long as he stayed, heard the man on whom rested the national hopes--her very future--pace his room without pause save to turn. It was like the fisher on the banks who must keep awake for a chance at a grab at the chains of the ship that may burst through the fog and crush his smack like a coconut-shell. At midnight the chief may have stopped to write, for there was a pause--but a breathing-spell. Then the pacing again till the attaché left at 3 A.M. When he came in the morning, not unanxious himself, he found his chief eating breakfast alone in the unquitted room. On the table lay a sheet of written paper: instructions for General Hooker to renew fighting although it only brought the slap on the other cheek--at Winchester--and still Lee pressed on into Pennsylvania till Harrisburg was menaced! But Meade supplanted "Fighting Joe," and Gettysburg wiped out the shame of the later repulses.

(The private secretary was W. O. Stoddard.)

WORKING FOR A LIVING MAKES ONE PRACTICAL.

The year 1863 was black-lettered in the North by disaster. General Hooker had been badly beaten by General Lee. The Confederate advance into Pennsylvania shook the strongest faith in the triumph of the Federal arms, and the victory of Gettysburg was attained at a bloody cost. The draft riots in New York excited a fear that the discontent with the colossal strife was deep-rooted. General Thomas, at Chickamauga, saved the Union Army from destruction, but the call for 300,000 three-years' men denoted that the end was not even glimpsed. Nevertheless, this latter feat of arms gladdened tremulous Washington, and among the exploits was cited to the President the desperate victualing of General Thomas' exhausted troops by General Garfield. He performed a dangerous ride from Rosencrantz to the beleagured victor and brought him craved-for provisions.

"How is it," inquired President Lincoln of an officer, courier of the details, "that Garfield did in two weeks what would have taken one of your West Pointers two months to accomplish?"

The recollection was perfectly well understood by the regular, who thought the amateur commander "meddled too much" with the operations of the field.

"Because he was not educated at West Point," was the reply, but half in jest.

"No, that was not the reason," corrected the questioner; "it was because, when a boy, he had to work for a living."

He rewarded "the purveyor-general" with the rank of major-general.

"HOLD ON AND CHAW!"

While in July, 1863, General Grant was held at Vicksburg by the siege which he successfully prosecuted, the New York draft riots broke out. Without knowing from experience that a riot, however portentous, must cease when the mob are drunk or spent, the inevitable contingencies, in his alarm General Halleck, at Washington, begged General Grant to send reenforcements, that he might not weaken the capital defenses to any extent. The commander of the West declined and referred to the President. General Horace Porter was on Grant's staff and saw his smiles as he read the despatch from headquarters.

"The President has more nerve than any of his advisers," observed he to his officers, for Lincoln did not agree with his Cabinet, as to the revolution in the rear; and the message was sent by the staff:

"I have seen your despatch, expressing your unwillingness to break your hold. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chaw and choke as much as possible!"

THE GREAT NATIONAL JOB.

"The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.... The job was a great national one, and let none be banned who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of lesser note. Nor must Uncle Sam's webfeet be forgotten. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bay, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks! Thanks to all--for the great republic!"--(Letter by President Lincoln, regretting inability to attend a meeting of unconditional Union men at Springfield, Illinois; dated August 26, 1863, to J. C. Conkling.)

FOR FLAYING A MAN ALIVE.

A representative of Ohio, Alexander Long, proposed in the House a recognition of the Southern Confederacy. It must be borne in mind that, before the firing on the supply-steamer at Charleston, which was despatched surreptitiously not "to offend the sympathizers' susceptibilities," many good citizens, dwelling on the silence of the Constitution as to secession, said openly that they did not see why the States chafing under the partnership all the original thirteen made, should not withdraw peacefully. Long was not solitary in his unseemly proposition, which, however, could never have been otherwise than untimely after the first shot.

General Garfield met the issue with indignation. He called the act "treason!" and denounced the author as a second Benedict Arnold. He entreated loyal representatives:

"Do not believe that another such growth on the soil of Ohio deformed the face of nature and darkened the light of God's day!"

When this speech met the President's eye, he hastened to thank General Garfield for having "flayed Long alive."

"ONE ON 'EM NOT DEAD YET!"

As communications were cut off with the North, intense anxiety was occasioned there by the situation in November, 1863, of General Burnside, packed in Knoxville, Tennessee, by Longstreet's dreaded veterans. At last a telegram reached the War Department, vaguely telling of "Firing heard in the direction of Knoxville." The President reading, expressed gladness, in spite of the remaining uncertainty.

"Why," said he to the group of officers and officials, "it reminds me of a neighbor of ours, in Indiana, in the brush, who had a numerous family of young ones. They were all the time wandering off into the scrub, but she was relieved as to their being lost by a squall every now and then. She would say: 'Thank the laws, there is one still alive!' That is, I hope one of our generals is in the thicket, but still alive and kicking!"

Indeed, Burnside resisted a night storming-party, and Longstreet was not "a lane that knew no turning," but turned and retreated!

THE SOUTH LIKE AN ASH-CAKE.

At the end of 1864, the Confederacy was scotched if not quite killed. Sherman had halved it by striking into Savannah. East Tennessee and southwest Virginia were cut by Stoneman. Alabama and Mississippi were traversed by Grierson and Wilson. In sum, the new map resembled that of a territory charted off into sections.

President Lincoln said that its face put him in mind of a weary traveler in the West, who came at night to a small log cabin. The homesteader and his wife said they would put him up, but had not a bite of victuals to offer him. He accepted the truss of litter and was soon asleep. But he was awakened by whispers letting out that in the fire ashes a hoe-cake was baking. The woman and her mate were merry over how they had defrauded the stranger of the food. Feeling mad at having been sent to bed supperless--uncommon mean in that part--he pretended to wake up and came forth to sit at the dying fire. He pretended, too, that he was ill from worry.

"The fact is, my father, when he died, left me a large farm. But I had no sooner taken possession of it than mortgages began to appear. My farm was situated like this----" He took up the loggerhead poker to illustrate, drawing lines in the ashes so as to enclose the ash-cake. "First one man got so much of it one side," he cut off a side of the hidden dough. "Then another brought in a mortgage and took off another piece there. Then another here, and another there! and here and there"--drawing the poker through the ashes to make the figure plain--"until," he said, "there was nothing of the farm left for anybody--which, I presume is the case with your cake!"

"And, I reckon," concluded Mr. Lincoln, "that the prospect is now very good of the South being as cut up as the ash-cake!"--(Telegraph Manager A. Chandler.)

"I COUNT FOR SOMETHING!"

The true lovers of the South were sorely wrung in 1864 by the Emperor Napoleon taking advantage of the "lockup" of the United States, to set a puppet in the Austrian Archduke Maximilian on the imperial throne-- so called--of Mexico. It was said that the Cabinet of Lincoln were divided on the subject; whereon the Marquis of Chambrun, having the ear of the Executive, called on him, and inquired on the real state--would the United States intervene, if only by winking at a filibustering expedition from the South, with Northern volunteers accessory, to assist the natives against the usurper?

"There has been war enough," was his rejoinder, with that sadness which Secretary Boutwell declares inseparable from him, but not due to the depression of public affairs. "I know what the American people want; but, thank God! I count for something, and during my second term there will be no more fighting!"

It was left for his successor, with the two armies disbanded, but still whetted for slaughter, to expel the French by the mere threat of their union to restore the republic.

PASSES NO GOOD FOR RICHMOND.

A person solicited the President for a pass to Richmond. But the other replied caustically:

"I should be happy to oblige you if my passes thither were respected; but I have issued two hundred and fifty thousand to go to Richmond, and not one man has got there yet!"

THE MAYOR IS THE BETTER HORSE.

The Lowell Citizen editor participated in a presidential reception in 1864, just before the fall of Richmond. The usher giving intimation that the President would see his audience at once, all were ushered into the inner room. "Abraham Lincoln's countenance bore that open, benignant outline expected; but what struck us especially was its cheerful, wide-awake expressiveness, never met with in the pictures of our beloved chief. The secret may have been that Secretary Stanton--middle-aged, well-built, stern-visaged man--had brought in his budget good news from Grant." After saluting his little circle of callers, they were seated and attended to in turn.

First in order was a citizen of Washington, praying for pardon in the case of a deserter.

"Well," said the President, after carefully reading the petition, "it is only natural for one to want pardon; but I must in that case have a responsible name that I know. I don't know you. Do you live in the city?"

"Yes."

"Do you know--h'm! the mayor?"

"Yes."

"Well, the mayor is the better horse. Bring me his name and I will let the boy off."

The soldier was pardoned.

THE REAL THING SUPERIOR TO THE SHAM BATTLE.

On the 25th of March, 1864, in honor of the President's renewal of office, a grand review had been fixed at City Point, outside the capital.

Whatever the opinion of the old military, the volunteers gave the civilian commander "the soldiers' vote." In imitation of the French soldiers dubbing Bonaparte "the Little Corporal," after his Italian victories, the Americans promoted Lincoln to be their "captain," as Walt Whitman worded it, after his repeated reinstatement. He was rapturously greeted by "his boys in blue." But the arrangements made at Washington in the undisturbed council were upset by General Lee. On that very morning he had attacked and taken Fort Stedman. To drive him out required a veritable action not terminating for several hours. Lincoln visited the scene of restoration after the carnage, and, on hearing regrets that the review--the chief recreation of the Washingtonians--he checked the light-souled attendants with:

"This victory is better than any review."

THE TOOL TURNED ON THE HANDLE.

The scales having fallen from our sight and the figure of the greatest American standing out colossal and clean-cut for posterity to worship as without a blemish, it is hard to measure the conceit of the clique of politicians, pettifoggers, and office-seekers certainly assisting in the advancement of Abraham Lincoln from confined obscurity in the West to the choice of the Northern nation. That was not enough, but still gaging him with their tape they withheld justice from him, after he displayed his worth in meeting the impending crisis.

When on the heels of the call for 300,000 men in 1863, came in spring, 1864, another for 500,000, to fortify General Grant in his finishing maneuvers, a murmur was heard. Chicago, gallantly having done her part, thought it was pumping at a void. A deputation from Cook County, headed by Lincolnites, departed for the capital to object to the summons. It was thought by his friends and long supporters that "their own elect" could not resist their plea, or turn it off with a joke. This deputation fined down to three persons, as it was not a patriotic quest. One of them also wished to balk, being Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune. As a matter of course, Secretary of War Stanton refused the indulgence, obdurate as he was. The President was likewise averse, but he did consent to go over the matter with Stanton. The result was the same. All was left solely to Lincoln, since the personal argument was implied by the mediums selected.

"I"--said Medill to Miss Tarbell--"I shall never forget how Mr. Lincoln suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a black and frowning face.

"'Gentlemen,' said he, in a voice full of bitterness, 'after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest has opposed the South as New England opposed the South. It was you who were largely responsible for causing the blood to flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You called for emancipation, and I have given it to you. Whatever you have asked, you have had.

"'Now you come here, begging to be let off from the call for men which I have made to carry out the war you demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a right to expect better things of you!

"'Go home and raise your six thousand extra men--the Cook County rate. And you, Medill, you are acting like a coward! You and your Tribune have had more influence than any paper in the Northwest in making this war. Go home and send us those men!'" They went home, and they raised and sent those men!

"SOONER THE FOWL BY HATCHING THE EGG THAN SMASHING IT."

"Still the question is not whether the Louisiana Government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse?... Concede that the new government is to what it should be as the egg to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it. (Laughter.)"--(Speech by A. Lincoln, his last! in answer to a serenade at the White House, 11th April, 1865, amid illuminations for the victories.)

TOO BUSY TO GO INTO ANOTHER BUSINESS.

There came into the presidential hearing a man of French accent from New Orleans. He was evidently a diffident person, not knowing how precisely to state his case. But the burden of it was that he was a real-estate holder in New Orleans, and, since the advent of military rulers there, he could not collect his rents, his living.

"Your case, my friend," said the President, "may be a hard one, but it might be worse. If, with your musket, you had taken your chances with the boys before Richmond, you might have found your bed and board before now! But the point is, what would you have me do for you? I have much to do, and the courts have been opened to relieve me in this regard."

The applicant, still embarrassed, said: "I am not in the habit of appearing before big men."

"And for that matter," it was quickly responded, "you have no need to change your habit, for you are not before very big men now;" playfully adding: "I am too busy to go into the rent-collection business."

THE SCALE OF REBELS.

When, at the finale, Lincoln reproved his own wife for using the hackneyed expression of rebels, suggesting Confederates, as officially accepted on both sides, a wit commented:

"The Southerners will be like the Jews. As a poor one is simply a Jew, a rich one a Hebrew, and a Rothschild an Israelite, so it will be rebels, Confederates, and our Southern brothers anew!"

ONE WAR AT A TIME.

When the Austrian archduke, Maximilian, was foisted upon Mexico as its emperor by Napoleon III., the Southerners, who did not have their "bellyful of fighting" by 1864, more than hinted that they would range shoulder to shoulder with the Federals to try to expel him and the mercenary Marshal Bazaine. But the President returned sagaciously:

"One war at a time!"

It was under his successor, Johnson, that the expulsion was effected and the upstart executed by the exasperated Mexicans themselves.

(NOTE.--This was undoubtedly said, but Mr. Henry Watterson, in his lecture on Lincoln, dates it as at the commencement of the war, when Secretary Seward, to forestall possible European alliances in favor of the Confederate States, proposed waging war against France and Spain, already allied, and challenging Russia and England to follow.)

"AGIN' THE GOVERNMENT."

In the summer of 1864, the governor-general of Canada paid the President a visit, with a numerous escort. During the late unpleasantness, as much comfort as possible under the Neutrality Act was believed to have been given the raiders into the border towns, as witness the St. Alban's Bank steal and the outfitting of blockade-runners. But they were treated at Washington with perfect courtesy. The head of the British party, at the conclusion, said with some sarcasm in his genial tone:

"I understand, Mr. President, that everybody is entitled to a vote in this country. If we remain until November, can we vote?"

"You would have to make a longer residence, which I could desire," politely replied the host; "only, I fear we should not gain much by that--for there was a countryman of your excellency, from the sister kingdom of Ireland, though, who came here, and on landing wanted to exercise the privilege you seek--to vote early and often! But the officials at Castle Garden landing-stage laughed at him, saying that he knew nothing about parties, to which he replied:

"'Bother the parties! It is the same here with me as in the old country--I am agin' the government!' You see, he wanted to vote on the side of the Rebellion! Your excellency would then be no more at a loss to decide on which side!"

PLOWING AROUND A LOG.

A State governor came to Washington, furious at the number of troops headquarters commanded of him and the mode of collecting them. Irate as he was, General Fry saw him bidding good-by to the Capitol with a placid, even pleased, mien. The general inquired of Lincoln himself how he had been so miraculously mollified.

"I suppose you had to make large concessions to him, as he returns from you entirely satisfied?" suggested the general.

"Oh, no," replied the President, "I did not concede anything.

"You know how that Illinois farmer managed the big log that lay in the middle of his field? To the inquiries of his neighbors, he announced he had gotten rid of it.

"'How did you do it?' they asked. 'It was too big to haul away, too knotty to split, too wet and soggy to burn. Whatever did you do?'

"'Well, now, boys, if you won't tell the secret, I'll tell you how. I just plowed 'round it!'

"Now, Fry, don't tell anybody, but I just plowed around the governor!"--(On the authority of General James B. Fry.)

NOT THE RIGHT "CLAY" TO CEMENT A UNION.

In 1864, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, and a great authority among the farming class and the extremists, consented to attend an abortive peace consultation with Southern representatives, George N. Sanders, Beverly Tucker, and Clement C. Clay, at Niagara Falls. Clay was so set upon Jefferson Davis being still left as a ruler in some high degree which would condone his action as President of the seceded States, the project, like others, was a "fizzle," as Lincoln would have said. To our President, Henry Clay was the "beau-ideal of a statesman"; but it was clear that his namesake was not of the Clay to cement a new Union!

"THE MAN DOWN SOUTH."

In August, 1864, a painful absorption was noticed in the President's manner, growing more and more strained and depressed. The ancient smile was fainter when it flitted over the long-drawn features, and the eyes seemed to bury themselves out of sight in the cavernous sockets, too dry for tears. These withdrawing fits were not uncommon, but they had become frequent this summer, and at the reception he had mechanically passed the welcome and given the hand-shake. But then the abstraction became so dense that he let an old friend stand before him without a glance, much less the usual hearty greeting expected. The newcomer, alarmed, ventured to arouse him. He shook off his absence of mind, seized the hand proffered him, and, while grasping it, exclaimed as though no others were by, also staring and pained:

"Excuse me! I was thinking--thinking of a man--down South!"

He was thinking of Sherman--that military genius who "burned his ships and penetrated a hostile country," like Cortez, and from whom no reliable news had been received while he was investing Savannah. Lincoln had in his mind been accompanying his captain on that forlorn march--"smashing things"--to the sea.

THE DISMEMBERED "YALLER" DOG.

Toward the end of December, 1864, the news trickled in of the utter discomfiture of Confederate General Hood's army at Nashville, by General Thomas. An enthusiastic friend of the President said to him:

"There is not enough left of Hood to make a dish-rag, is there?"

"Well, no, Medill; I think Hood's army is in about the identical fix of Bill Sykes' dog (the application from Dickens is noticeable as showing Lincoln's eclectic reading) down in Sangamon County. Did you never hear it?"

As a Chicago man Mr. Medill might be allowed to be ignorant of Sangamon Valley incidents.

"Well, this Bill Sykes had a long, hungry yaller dog, forever getting into the neighbors' meat smokehouses, and chicken-coops, and the like. They had tried to kill it a hundred-odd times, but the dog was always too smart for them. Finally, one of them got a coon's innards, and filled it up with gunpowder, and tied a piece of punk in the nozle. When he see this dog a-coming 'round, he fired this punk, split open a corn-cake and squoze the intestine inside, all nice and slab, and threw out the lot. The dog was always ravenous, and swallered the heap--kerchunk!

"Pretty soon along come an explosion--so the man said. The head of the animal lit on the stoop; the fore legs caught a-straddle of the fence; the hind legs kicked in the ditch, and the rest of the critter lay around loose. Pretty soon who should come along but Bill, and he was looking for his dog when he heard the supposed gun go off. The neighbor said, innocentlike: 'William, I guess that there is not much of that dog left to catch anybody's fowls?'

"'Well, no,' admitted Sykes; 'I see plenty of pieces, but I guess that dog as a dog, ain't of much account.'

"Just so, Medill, there may be fragments of Hood's army around, but I guess that army, as an army, ain't of much more account!"

(Joseph Medill was editor of the Chicago Tribune; he was one of the coterie who claimed to have "discovered" Abraham Lincoln, and surely added propulsion to the wave carrying him to Washington. Another version of this anecdote is applied to the breaking up of General Early's rashly advanced army in July; but it would seem, by Mr. Medill's name, that this is the genuine; the other is not told in the Western vernacular of Mr. William Sykes.)

THE METEOROLOGICAL OMEN.

The second inauguration day was amid the usual March weather in the District of Columbia, like the fickle April in unkinder latitudes: smile and scowl. But as the President kissed the book there was a sudden parting of the clouds, and a sunburst broke in all its splendor. This is testified to by the newspaper correspondents, Frank Moore, Noah Brooks, and others. The President said next day:

"Did you notice the sun burst? It made me jump!"

DID SHE TAKE THE WINK TO HERSELF?

Miss Anna Dickinson, lecturing by invitation in the House of Representatives' Hall, alluded to the sunburst which came upon the President on inauguration day, just as he took the oath of office. The illustrious auditor sat directly in front of the lady, so that he also faced the reporters' gallery behind her. Lincoln amiably glanced over her head, caught sight of an acquaintance among the newspaper men, and winked to him as she made the reference to the so-esteemed omen. Next day he said to this gentleman--Noah Brooks:

"I wonder if Miss Dickinson saw me wink at you?"

GOING DOWN WITH COLORS FLYING.

All the wire-pulling of the many contestants for the presidential chair failed to get a prize upon it. It was held that there must be in excelsis no "swapping of horses in crossing the stream," still turbid and dangerous. So the National Convention, held at Baltimore, purged by this time of its former treasonable activity, at the Soldiers' Fair, held there, the President had alluded to the time when he had to be whisked through as past a bed of vipers, and said:

"Blessings on the men who have wrought these changes!"

All the States voted for the incumbent save Missouri, which stood for General Grant, but the votes transferred to Lincoln, the opinion was unanimous. Within two months he was driven by circumstances to call out five hundred thousand men. His partizans regretted the necessity, and on the old story that the people were tired of the war declared it would prove injurious to his re-election. But it is undisputed that about half the levies never reached their mustering-point. The arts and wiles of the marplots were equaled only by the prodigality and persistency of the parents to save their sons from "the evils of camp life." It is but fair to the Puritans to accept their plea that the loss of them fighting the country's battles did not so distress them. Lincoln replied to the political argument nobly:

"Gentlemen, it is not necessary that I should be re-elected, but it is necessary that our brave boys in the front should be supported, and the country saved." (The hackneyed phrase had led to his party being nicknamed "the Union-savers.") "I shall call out the five hundred thousand more men, and if I go down under the measure I will go down like the Cumberland, with my colors flying!"

(On the 8th of March, 1862, the Confederate iron-clad ram, Merrimac, ran into and sank the Union sloop of war, Cumberland, nearly all of the latter's company perishing. Acting-captain Morris refused to strike his flag.)

THERE MUST BE THE BELL-MULE.

President Lincoln formally disavowed the desire erroneously attributed to him by military critics that he wished to die "with soldiers' harness on his back." To quote General Grant, to whom he said in their first interview when the victor of the West was summoned to Washington to be made lieutenant-general, and given full command over all the national forces:

"Mr. Lincoln stated to me that he had never professed to be a military man, or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to interfere with them; but that procrastination on the part of his commanders, and the pressure of people at the North, and of Congress, had forced him into issuing the 'executive orders.' He did not know but that they were all wrong, and did not know that some of them were."

"ROOT, HOG, OR DIE!"

In February, 1865, permission was requested from the National Government for three appointees on a peace commission to confer with the Executive. It was granted, but the parties were not allowed to enter Washington, as they wanted to do, to give more luster to the course. The interview of the President, Mr. Seward the "bottle- holder"--as it was facetiously said about this sparring-match for breath--was with Alexander Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, of Alabama, on board of the River Queen, off Fort Monroe. The discussion lasted four hours, but, though on friendly terms, as "between gentlemen," resulted in nothing. For the President held that the first step which must be taken was the recognition of the Union. As was his habit, he rounded off the parley with one of his stories apropos.

Mr. Hunter, a Virginian, had assumed that, if the South consented to peace on the basis of the Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves would precipitate ruin on not only themselves, but the entire Southern society.

Mr. Lincoln said to Henry J. Raymond, of the Times, New York, that:

"I waited for Seward to answer that argument, but, as he was silent, I at length said: 'Mr. Hunter, you ought to know a great deal better about that than I, for you have always lived under the slave system. I can only say in reply to your statement of the case that it reminds me of a man out in Illinois, by the name of Case, who undertook to raise a very large herd of hogs. It was a great trouble to feed them, and how to get around this was a puzzle to him. At length he hit upon a plan of planting a great field of potatoes, and, when they were sufficiently grown, turned the whole herd into the field and let them have full swing, thus saving not only the labor of feeding the hogs, but also that of digging the potatoes. Charmed with his sagacity, he stood one day leaning against the fence, counting his hogs, when a neighbor came along.

"'Well, well,' said he; 'this is all very fine, Mr. Case. Your hogs are doing very well just now, but, you know, out here in Illinois the frost comes early, and the ground freezes for a foot deep. Then, what are you going to do?'

"This was a view of the matter Mr. Case had not taken into account. Butchering time for hogs was 'way on in December or January! He scratched his head, and at length stammered:

"'Well, it may come pretty hard on their snouts, but I don't see but it will be "Root, hog, or, die!"'"

The speaker had no need to draw this moral as to the fate of the South after the war, for black or white, from a Case in Illinois; the negro minstrel song was current then which supplied the apt allusion, and was called "Root, Hog, or Die." It may well be that the sailors conveying the baffled commissioners to Richmond, or the soldiers about the "other government," were chanting the instructive and prophetic chorus: "It doan' make a bit of difference to either you or I, but Big Pig or Little Pig, it is Root, Hog, or Die."

Mr. Raymond, in chronicling this anecdote, tells of the New York Herald giving the story in a mangled and pointless copy. But it was current in conversation. Mr. Lincoln was in hopes that "it would not leak out lest some oversensitive people should imagine there was a degree of levity in the intercourse between us."

Quite otherwise, for the majority thought the illustration as good as any argument, and would have deemed the speaker prophet if they could have foreseen that the South would have to buckle down to hard work to redeem the losses.

THE GRANT BRAND OF WHISKY.

Although a Kentuckian--orthodox jest--Lincoln was so known for his rare temperance convictions that no one carped at the buffet at his official house being clear of the decanters characterizing it in previous administrations. The total abstinence societies therefore hailed him as an apostle of their creed. Consequently, they had been pleased, on certain occasions, at his espousing and cheering their counsel. When General Grant was elevating himself by his string of solid victories in the West, it was object of caviling, by the adherents of the generals eclipsed and foreseeing his becoming lieutenant-general, and the slander circulated that "Philip sober" got the credit of "Philip drunk," perpetrating his plans with the dram-bottle at his elbow.

Lincoln heard out this spiteful diatribe with his habitual patience, when, calmly looking at the chairman, he responded:

"Gentlemen, since you are so familiar with the general's habits, would you oblige me with the name of General Grant's favorite brand of whisky. I want so to send some barrels of it to my other generals!"

The deputation withdrew in poor order.

Major Eckert says that Mr. Lincoln told him he had heard this story. It was good, and would be very good if he had told it--but he did not. He supposed it was "charged to him to give it currency." He went on to say:

"The original is back in King George's time. Bitter complaints were made against General Wolfe that he was mad. The king, who could be more justly accused of that, replied: 'I wish he would bite some of my other generals.'"

"A GENERAL, AT LAST!"

Without disparaging the Lincoln generals, it may be said that they will never occupy a niche in Walhalla beside Napoleon's marshals and Washington's commanders. But Washington society liked them one with another for affording opportunities of outings to the grand reviews and parades. One--that to Bull Run--turned out a failure, and the Southerners chasing the fugitives had the pickings of the iced wines, game pies, and cold chicken which "Brick" Pomeroy saw strewing the road back. Grant's negligent and war-worn uniform did not remind any one of the gay and brilliant period of "Old Fuss and Feathers," the veteran Scott. But Grant and the other Westerner, Lincoln, mutually pleased at their first meeting, the latter emerged from the interview exclaiming with joy:

"At last, we have a general!"

A FIZZLE ANYHOW!

American dash was, in military matters as in others, opposed to the engineering schemes dear to the scientific officers fresh from West Point Academy. Among their projects was the Dutch Gap Canal at City Point. When Grant, as his lieutenant-general, was conducted by the President to see the forces and their positions, the guide made known his opinion of the undertaking in his frank manner, consonant with the new commander's bluntness.

"Grant, do you know what this reminds me of? In the outskirts of our Springfield, there was a blacksmith of an ingenious turn, who could make something of pretty nigh anything in his line. But he got hold of a bit of iron one day that he attempted to make into a corn-knife, but the stuff would not hold an edge, so he reasoned it would be a claw-hammer; but that would be a loss of overplus, and he tried to make an ax-head. That did not come out to a five-pounder; and, getting disgusted, he blew up the fire to a white heat around the metal mass, when, yanking it out with his tongs, he flung it into the water-tub hard by, and cried out:

"'Well, if I can't make anything of you, I'll make a fizzle anyhow!'

"Well, general, I am afeared that that's what we'll make of the Dutch Gap Canal."

"FORGET OVER A GRAVE!"

When the Chronicle, of Washington, had the noble courage to speak well of "Stonewall" Jackson, accidentally shot, as a brave soldier, however mistaken as an American, Lincoln wrote to the editor:

"I honor you for your generosity to one who, though contending against us in a guilty cause, was nevertheless a gallant man. Let us forget his sins over a fresh-made grave."

IF HE FELT THAT WAY--START!

Although Colonel Dana, of the private branch of the War Office Intelligence Department, might have claimed exemption from active service, he never spared himself, though such a messenger ran not only the common military dangers, but of the Johnnies treating him as a spy. During the battles of the Wilderness, acute was the trepidation in Washington, where no news had come since a couple of days--Grant having "cut loose" and buried himself in the midst of the foes. Nevertheless, Dana had a train at Maryland Avenue to take him to the front, and a horse and escort to see him farther; he came to take the President's last orders. But the other had been reflecting on the perils into which he would be sending his favorite despatch-bearer.

"You can't tell where Lee is, or what he is doing; Jeb Stuart is on the rampage pretty lively between the Rappahannock and the Rapidan. It is considerable risk, and I do not like to expose you to it."

"But I am all ready; and we are equipped, if it comes to the worst, to run!"

"Well, now, if you feel that way--start!"--(E. P. Mitchell, from Dana.)

FIGURES WILL PROVE ANYTHING.

Toward the finish of the Rebellion, Lincoln was asked to what number the enemy might amount. He replied with singular readiness:

"The Confederates have one million two hundred thousand men in the field."

Astonishment being manifested at the precision, he went on, smiling:

"Every time a Union commander gets licked, he says the enemy outnumbered him three or four times. We have three or four hundred thousand, so--logic is logic! they are three times that; say, one million two hundred thousand."

As a fact, at the grand review before the President (Johnson) the two armies of Grant and Sherman, May, 1865, two hundred thousand veterans filed past. Lincoln should have lived to see that glorious march past.

"I DON'T WANT TO--BUT THAT'S IT IF I MUST DIE!"

In the ferment, as the term of Lincoln's first office-holding was terminating, the old war fever returned by which "Little Mac (McClellan), Idol of the Army" was hailed as "the hope of the country." Only this time the presage was that General Grant had only to secure that phantasm, the capture of Richmond, to be nominated and elected. This reached the President's ears through the "hanged good-natured friend," as Sheridan--the wit, not the general--calls the stinging tongue.

"Well," drawled Mr. Lincoln, "I feel very much like the man who said he did not particularly want to die, but, if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he wanted to die of!"

BEST LET AN ELEPHANT GO!

A rebel emissary, the notorious Jacob Thompson, was reported by the secret service as slipping through the North and trying to get passage to Europe on the Allan steamship out of Portland, Maine, or Canada. Brevet-general Dana, confidential officer to the War Department and the President, inquired if the fugitive was to be detained at Portland, where the provost-marshal thought he could capture him. Secretary Stanton wanted him apprehended.

"H'm," said Lincoln, who was being shaved, "I don't know as I have any apprehension in that quarter. When you have an elephant on your hands, and he wants to run away, better let him run!"

(NOTE.--The "Unbeknownst" story has been applied to this tolerated "escape.")

HISTORY REPEATS.

There is a double echo in the Lincolnian saying, "No surrender, though at the end of one or a hundred defeats," from General-President Taylor's reply at Buena Vista: "General Taylor never surrenders," to its antecedent, not so well authenticated, of General Cambronne at Waterloo: "The Old Guard dies, but does not surrender."

"NOT THE PRESIDENT, BUT THE OLD FRIEND."

In February, 1865, General Grant's plans were so well shaped that, with the reenforcement of General Sherman returned from his march to Savannah, he could count on crushing up Richmond, as an egg under trip-hammers. Before this the doom was registered, for the Southerners were at the end of their men, as before they had been at that of their means. Bridges burned or blown up, the rebel army was pouring out of their capital with the fear that their one or two ways of flight were already blocked by Sheridan or Sherman. The desperate attempt to arm the slaves against their coming deliverer was the "last kick." Lee clung to Richmond in hope that his lieutenant, Johnston, would check the oncomer, but he was compelled to notify his President and colleagues that flight was their only resource when he could no longer fight.

Lincoln was at Petersburg at Grant's headquarters when, a few miles off, Davis received the fatal intelligence that Lee was being deserted so freely that there would not be a body-guard left him. He fled, to be ignominiously captured in female disguise. His lair was hot when Lincoln entered it, and made it his closet, whence he issued his orders.

Soon after this occupation the victor heard the name of Pickett announced to him. The Southern general, George Pickett, was a protégé of his, as he smoothed his entry upon the West Point Military Academy book when he was a congressman. Without either knowing it, the hero was lying dead on a hard-fought field close by. But Lincoln ordered her admittance. She was accompanied by her little son. This alone would have prevailed over the President, but, as she formally addressed him as the authority, he interrupted:

"Not the President, but George's old friend!"

And beckoning the wondering boy to him with the irresistible attraction of men who love the young, and are intuitively loved by them, he said:

"Tell your father, rascal, that I forgive him for the sake of your mother's smile, and your own bright eyes."

This reconciliation on the fall of the sword was a token of the forgivingness of the North toward the chastened foes.

"CLOSE YOUR EYES!"

The Marquis of Chambrun, a French volunteer, who entered the Lincoln circle, relates in a more elegant strain the above incident. He states that Thompson and Sanders were informed upon, and Stanton repeated the information to the President with a view of having them intercepted. But the other in his tender voice responded:

"Let us close our eyes, and leave them pass unnoticed."

DON'T JUDGE BY APPEARANCES.

The President's recklessness seems incredible as to going about the capital, as far as he knew and wished, without escort, but his "browsing," to use his word, about the perilous front while the concluding actions were enveloping Petersburg preliminarily to the rush at Richmond, partake of the nature of a fanatic's daring. This is the support to the otherwise taxing story told by Doctor J. E. Burriss, of New York, then a volunteer soldier at the place. He states that Lincoln, so shabbily dressed as to be taken for a farmer or planter, was so treated by soldiery before a tobacco-warehouse under guard. They wanted tobacco, and begged him to allow some to be turned out. He approached a young lieutenant commanding the post, but the latter was insolent to the "old Southerner." The latter sent a soldier to General Grant, who himself rode up, post-haste, at the summons. The soldiers were given some of the Indian weed, and the donor, turning to the impertinent officer, who had thought him a converted reb, said:

"Young sir, do not judge by appearances; and for the future treat your elders with more respect."

"NOTHING CAN TOUCH HIM FURTHER."

Returning to Washington from Richmond, Lincoln read twice to friends on the journey, from his pocket Shakespeare:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further.

"WENT AND RETURNED!"

The last days of March, 1865, contained the three battles, closing with that of Five Forks, signalizing the collapse of the Confederacy at Richmond. The President, at the front, sent the news of victories to the Cabinet at home. After the battles, the advance of the triumphing Unionists. On Monday morning Lincoln was enabled to telegraph the talismanic words so often dreamed of in the last agonizing years of fluctuating hope:

"Richmond has fallen! I am about to enter!"

Secretary Stanton, of the war office, immediately implored: "Do not peril your life!"

But in the morning he received this line from the most independent President known since Jackson:

"Received your despatch; went to Richmond, and returned this morning!"

Expostulated with by Speaker Colfax on the apparent rashness, for he had completed "the foolhardy act" by occupying President Jefferson Davis' vacated house, he replied with the calm of a man of destiny:

"I should have been alarmed myself if any other person had been President and gone there; but I did not feel in any danger whatever."

(NOTE.--Mark the analogy in great men. General Grant says of his first emotions in war--the Mexican--"If some one else had been colonel, and I had been lieutenant-colonel, I do not think I would have felt any trepidation.")

THE CLEAR FORESIGHT.

On the 2d of April, 1865, the President was at City Point, Grant's headquarters, until he started forth for the culminating series of ceaseless strokes. That morning, attack along the whole line had been commanded, and the President telegraphed to his wife, at the capital, during the raging battle. He knew that already the hostile lines had been pierced in one or more places, and that Sheridan's cavalry rush was supported by a division of infantry. He concludes foreseeing that at length "pegging away" was over and slugging begun:

"All is now favorable!"

In truth, on that same day, the rebel government at Richmond faded thence like a mirage, and, within one week, General Lee surrendered his enfeebled relic of a grand army.

DO IT "UNBEKNOWNST."

On April 7, 1865, General Grant had enveloped the enemy so that he could be assured that the rebel government, if it remained in Richmond as the "last ditch," would be trapped. He notified the President close by, at Petersburg, and asked what should be done in the event of the game being bagged. The plan was, it seems, to have slain the ex-President and his Cabinet officers in a rout, and the charge would have been described as massacre abroad. The arbiter on this point of anguish replied in his characteristic manner:

"I will tell you a story. There was once an Irishman, who signed the Father Mathew's temperance pledge. But a few days afterward he became terribly thirsty, and finally went into a familiar resort, where the barkeeper was, at first, startled to hear him call for a 'straight' soda. He related that he had taken the pledge, so he hinted, with an Irishman's broadness of hint, 'you might put in some spirits unbeknownst to me!'"

(NOTE.--Another and later version--for the above was limitedly repeated at the time with gusto and appreciation of the sublety--makes the hero a temperance lecturer at Lincoln's father's house. This is stupid, for Lincoln, a fervent temperance advocate, would not have decried the apostles of the doctrine for which he was also a sufferer.)

In course of time doubt has been cast on this anecdote by reason that the President would not have jested at such a juncture. But abundant confirmation was forthcoming at the time. Besides, we have so grave a general as Sherman alluding to the "Unbeknownst" in an official document.

ONE CANNOT DIE TWICE.

In Lincoln's last interview with his rustic friends, Mrs. Armstrong repeated the fears many apprehended of evil being visited on the President-elect on his way to be inaugurated.

"Hannah, if they do kill me, I shall never die another death!" and laughed at her.

NO MORE INVIDIOUS NAME-CALLING.

On returning from a carriage-drive into Washington, Mrs. Lincoln--who was not the Southern sympathizer the scandalous hinted--glanced at the city, and said aloud with bitterness:

"That city is full of our enemies!"

Had she a premonition on the fatal eve?

Right before the Marquis of Chambrun, their companion, the President serenely said:

"Enemies, Mary! Never speak of that!"

No wonder, when the dastardly taking off was bruited through the beaten but ever gallant South, they knew that they had lost "their best friend!" as General Pickett styled Lincoln.--(By the Marquis of Chambrun.)

"THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE TREASURY OF THE WORLD."

As Schuyler Colfax was going West, Lincoln, in bidding him the last farewell, said foresightedly:

"I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our nation. Now that the Rebellion is overthrown, and we know pretty nearly the amount of our national debt, the more gold and silver we mine, we make the payment of that debt the easier. Tell the miners from me that I shall promote their interests to the best of my ability because their prosperity is the prosperity of the nation; and we shall prove in a few years that we are the treasury of the world."

"HANG ON--NOT HANG!"

On April 11, 1865, Mr. Lincoln spoke out of his study window to an immense and joyous crowd. There were rockets, and portfire, and a huge bonfire, while the President was serenaded. The finish of the Rebellion delighted all persons. His offhand speech was full of compassion and brotherly love. Louisiana was already being "reconstructed." Mr. Harlan, who followed the chief, touched the major key: "What shall we do with the rebels?" To which the mob responded hoarsely:

"Hang them!"

Lincoln's little son, Tad, was in the room, playing with the quills on the table where his father made his notes. He looked at his father, and said, as one whose intimacy made him familiar with his inmost thoughts:

"No, papa; not hang them--but hang on to them!"

The President triumphantly repeated:

"We must hang on to them! Tad's got it!"--(By Mrs. H. McCulloch, present.)

LINCOLN'S LAST WISH.

"Springfield! how happy four years hence will I be, to return there in peace and tranquillity!"--(To the Marquis of Chambrun, April, 1865.)

ASSASSINATION.

At Springfield, immediately upon the election for President, Lincoln began to receive letters with lethal menaces. His friends took them as serious, and two or more carried weapons, and escorted him closely that no one with a dagger might reach his side. Calling on his stepmother for the farewell, she reiterated the general, and rising, fears. At Philadelphia, detectives and others whispered of a plot matured at Baltimore, and in his speech at raising the flag over Independence Hall he said pointedly:

"If this country cannot be saved without giving up this principle--liberty to the world--I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on the spot than surrender it.... I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by."--(Speech, Philadelphia, February, 1861.)

A PRESIDENT, NOT AN EMPEROR.

The President said to Colonel Halpine as respected the life-guards, which he soon dispensed with around his person, often going out unawares so as to "dodge" the escort in waiting:

"It will never do for the President of a republic to have guards with drawn swords at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor."

THE PLOT TO WAYLAY THE PRESIDENT (1860).

The dispute as to whether there was a foundation to the supposed plot to waylay and sequester President-elect Lincoln between Philadelphia and Washington is notable. From the later light and the letter from Wilkes Booth to his brother-in-law, Sleeper Clarke, the comedian, no doubt is left that to kidnap him was a plot dated very early when the foresighted slave-holders were certain that he was a greater enemy from consistency than the louder-voiced and openly violent Abolitionists. While Colonel Lamon doubted, and wished he had not been beguiled into aiding in the ignominious flight in disguise and secretly by train, Secretary Seward and General Scott gave it credence. The foreboding had touched Lincoln before he left his Illinois home. At Springfield his farewell speech is tinged with shade. At Philadelphia and Harrisburg he spoke of blood-spilling, and used the word "assassination" at the former. He took up the matter like a reasoner. Already the detective brothers, Pinkerton, had an inkling of the doings of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or some such secret society, designing regicide. So, as the Concordance is held as a proof from the variance of the witnesses to scenes, he argued that the story was founded. Otherwise he would not have heard of the criminal attempt from all sides. That was what made him yield his dignity to the safety of a person whom he felt was chosen for the crisis. The next morning he had concluded to pass through Baltimore at another than the arranged hour to foil the plot.

"I DON'T BELIEVE THERE IS ANY DANGER!"

One night the President had been very late with the secretary of war at the latter's department. But, just the same, he insisted on his getting home by the short cut--a foot-path, lined and embowered by trees, then leading from the war office to the White House. But Stanton stopped him.

"You ought not to go that way; it is dangerous for you in the daytime"--it did lend itself to an ambuscade, and persons who knew Wilkes Booth assert having seen him prowling around--"it is worse at night!"

"I do not believe there is any danger there, night or day!" responded the President, with Malcolm's confidence that he stood "in the great hand of God."

"Well, Mr. President," continued Stanton, a stubborn man himself, "you shall not be killed returning from my department by that dark way while I am in it!"

And he forced him to enter his carriage to return by the well-lighted avenue.

Lincoln had previously consented to carry a cane. (By Schuyler Colfax.)

WORRY TILL YOU GET RID OF THINGS.

On Colonel Halpine trying to make the chief see that even indoors there was danger, he debated about the two menaces--violence of "cranks" and of a political fanatic. He thought too well of the sense of the "people at Richmond," some of whom had been colleagues of his in his first stay in Washington as congressman.

"Do you think that they would like to have Hannibal Hamlin--his first vice-president--here any better than myself?"

The story is repeated with his second Vice substituted for the first, with the more justification, as "Andy" Johnson was impeached for his incompetency. Detective Baker put it this way: "As to the crazy folks, I must take my chances. The most crazy people being, I fear, some of my own too zealous adherents."

(He had the same idea as in an ancient Chinese proverb: "You may steal the captain out of his castle, but you cannot steal the castle.")

"I am but a single individual, and it would not help their cause, or make the least difference in the progress of the war." [Footnote: He might have said, as truly as his predecessor, John Tyler, reproached also for going about unguarded: "My body-guard is the people who elected me."]--(Cited by F. B. Carpenter.)

THE FEARLESSNESS OF THE GOD-FEARING.

Lincoln said that by the death of his son Willie he was touched; by the victory of Gettysburg made a believer. It is plain that, after this, a fortitude replaced the despondency stamping him. It may be due to this conviction of being one of the chosen, like Cromwell and Gordon, soldiers of Christ, that he met all adjurations for him to take care of his precious life with fanatical unconcern. He communicated to the Cabinet, at the close of the conflict, how he had appointed to confer alone and without guards to terrify the emissary, a noted Confederate. They were to discuss peace--and by that word, Lincoln was drawn to any one. He answered the cautions with the simple saying: