LINCOLN'S BOOK CRITICISM.

"For those who like this kind of book, this is the kind of book they will like."--(New York Times Book Review, July 7, 1901.)

THE HAND-TO-HAND ENCOUNTER.

Toward the evident close of the struggle an English nobleman came to Washington, credited to the embassy. This was somewhat impudent and imprudent of him, too, as, in early times, he was prominent among the British aristocrats who had supported the Confederate States. He had assisted in their being declared belligerents--a sore point. He had invested in the "Cotton Loan," and voted in sustenance of the Lairds getting the rebel pirates out of the Mersey. Altogether, he must have attended the regular White House reception from thinking his hostility was unrecorded. But the President was clearly prepared for the fox-paw! He spoke to the Briton smoothly enough, but when the unsuspecting hand was placed in his grasp he gave it one of those natural and not formal grips which left an impression on him forever. The balladist's line was realized for him: "It is hard to give the hand where the heart can never be."

BETTER SOMETIMES RIGHT THAN ALL TIMES WRONG.

In 1832, when candidate for the Illinois legislative chambers, Lincoln said he held it "a sound maxim better only sometimes to be right than at all times wrong."

MAKING THE DAGGER STAB THE HOLDER.

Upon the first debate of the Lincoln-Douglas series, an admirer of the former, having no doubt now "the stump speaker" would defeat the meretricious parliamentarian, said:

"I believe, Abe, you can beat Douglas for the Senate."

"No, Len, I can't beat him for the Senate, but I'll make him beat himself for the Presidency."

Douglas did gain the prize, but he lost his chances in the presidential race by alienating the whole Southern vote.--(Related by Mr. Leonard Swett, the "Len" above, to Mr. Augustus C. Buell.)

THE TAIL OF THE KITE.

"Congress, like the poor, is always with us!"--(To General Grant. "Grant's Memoirs.")

NO DAY WITHOUT A LINE.

"I don't think much of a man not wiser to-day than he was yesterday."--(A. Lincoln.)

TRUTH AND THE PEOPLE.

"The people are always much nearer the truth than politicians suppose."--(A. Lincoln.)

"CALL ME 'LINCOLN.'"

Like the Friends, Abraham Lincoln had a dislike for handles to a name, and at the first incurred criticism in fastidious Washington circles by his using the last name and not the Christian one to familiars. To an intimate friend he appealed:

"Now, call me 'Lincoln,' and I'll promise not to tell of the breach of etiquette, if you won't (Ah, how well he knew the vanity of great men's Horatios!), and I shall have a resting spell from Mister Lincoln!"

THE ELOQUENT HAND.

The colonel of the famous Massachusetts Sixth, which fought its way through Baltimore, risen in riot, B. F. Watson, led fifty men to cleave their way through "the Plug-uglies," vile toughs. On reporting at the capital he found Commanding General Scott receiving the mayor of Baltimore, hastening to sue for the sacred soil not being again trodden on by the ruthless foot of the Yankees. President Lincoln happened in and, recognizing Colonel Watson, who was only second in command then, complimented him on his "saving the capital," and introduced him to the company. Presuming that his quality would awe a young and amateur soldier, the unlucky mayor had the audacity to require his confirmation of his story. He said that he had dared the mob, and, to shield the soldiers, marched at their head, etc. But the officer, still warm from his baptism of fire, truly replied that he could not give a certificate of character. He related how the riff-raff had assailed the volunteers, wonderfully forbearing about not using their guns, and that the police and other officials had sworn that they should not pass alive, while the head and front, as he called himself, marched only a few yards--quitting on the pretext that it was too hot for him!

"Many times," said Colonel Watson, "have I recalled the mayor's look of intense disgust, the astonishing dignity of the commanding general, and the expression, half-sad, half-quizzical, on the face of the President at the evident infelicity of his introduction. If I did not leave that distinguished presence with my reputation for integrity unimpaired, the pressure of Abraham Lincoln's honest hand, as we parted, deceived me."

WOMAN.

"Woman is man's best present from his Maker."--(A. Lincoln.)

TO THINK AND TO DO WELL.

"It is more than mortal to think and to do well on all occasions and subjects."--(To Senator James F. Wilson.)

"SET THE TRAP AGAIN!"

To fix extreme abolition upon Abraham Lincoln, Senator Douglas lent himself to assuring that his rival had taken part in a convention and helped pass a certain resolution. This was a fraud, as there was no such resolution passed, and Lincoln was not present.

"The main object of that forgery was to beat Yates and elect Harris for Congress, object known to be exceedingly dear to Judge Douglas at the time.... The fraud having been apparently successful, both Harris and Douglas have more than once since then been attempting to put it to new uses. As the fisherman's wife, whose drowned husband was brought home with his body full of eels, said, when asked what was to be done with him: 'Take out the eels and set him again!' [Footnote: See Colman's "Broad Grins."] So Harris and Douglas have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which they gained Harris' election, and set the fraud again, more than once."--(Speech by A. Lincoln, Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858.)

"NO ROYALTY IN OUR CARRIAGE."

From August to mid-October, 1858, Lincoln and Douglas warred on the platform throughout Illinois, in a celebrated series of debates. As the senator was in a high position, and expected to reap yet more important honors, the Central Railroad corporation extended to him all graces. A special car, the Pullman in embryo in reality, was at his beck, and a train for his numerous friends if he spoke. On the other hand, his rival, becoming more and more democratic in his leaning to the grotesque, gloried in traveling even in the caboose of a freight-train. He had no brass bands and no canteen for all comers; on one occasion his humble "freighter" was side-tracked to let the palace-cars sweep majestically by, a calliope playing "Hail to the Chief!" and laughter mingling with toasts shouted tauntingly through the open windows. The oppositionist laughed to his friends, and said:

"The gentleman in that decorated car evidently smelled no royalty in our scow!"

He scoffed at these "fizzlegigs and fireworks," to employ his phrase.

But his keen sense of the ludicrous was not shared with his admirers. On the contrary, the women saw nothing absurd in drowning him with flowers and the men in "chairing him." Henry Villard relates that he saw him battling with his supporters literally, and beseeching them who bore him shoulder-high, with his long limbs gesticulating like a spider's, for them to "Let me down!"

In another place, after Douglas had been galloped to the platform in his carriage and pair, his antagonist was hauled up in a hayrack-wagon drawn by lumbering farm-horses.

THE TRAP TO CATCH A DOUGLAS.

In the course of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the former, among his friends, announced that at the next meeting he would put a "settler" to his contestant, and "I don't care a continental which way he answers it."

As he did not explain, all awaited the evening's speeches for enlightenment. In the midst of Douglas' "piece," Lincoln begged to be allowed a leetle question. The Lincolnian "leetle questions" were beginning to be rankling darts.

Formally, the question was: "Can the people of a United States territory, in a lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the foundation of a State constitution?"

In the homely way Lincoln put it, it ran:

"Suppose, jedge (for Judge Douglas) there was a new town or colony, just started in some Western territory; and suppose there was precisely one hundred householders--voters, there--and suppose, jedge, that ninety-nine did not want slavery and the one did. What would be done about it?"

This was the argument about "Free Soil" and "squatter sovereignty" in a nutshell.

The wily politician strove to avoid the loop, but finally admitted that on American principles the majority must rule. This caused the Charleston Convention of 1860 to split on this point, and Douglas lost all hope of the Presidency.

PRACTISE BEFORE AND BEHIND "THE BAR."

The debate between Douglas and Lincoln, while marked by speeches severe and stately, was interspersed with repartees and innuendoes as might be awaited from former friends and become, by double rivalry, fierce enemies.

The senator did not disdain to stoop to casting back at Lincoln's humble beginning, and taunted him with having kept store and waited behind the bar before waiting before the bar judicial for his turn to practise law. His adversary rose amid the laughter, and rejoined:

"What the jedge (Judge Douglas) has said, gentlemen, is true enough. I did keep a grocery, and sometimes I did sell whisky; but I remember that in those days Mr. Douglas was one of my best customers for the same. But the difference between us now is that I do not practise behind the bar at present, while Mr. Douglas keeps right on before it."

CONNUBIAL AMITY.

"Mr. Douglas has no more thought of fighting me than fighting his wife."--(Said during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, at a rumor that the senator would challenge him for some personality.)

THE MODEL WHISKY-BARREL.

During the Douglas-Lincoln series of debates, the former made a jest counting upon his being President some day. He said that his father was a cooper, yet, with prescience, had not taught him the paternal craft, but made him a cabinet-maker. His adherents who counted on office if he won loudly applauded. Douglas was a thick-set, rotund man, whose florid gills revealed that he was a host for boon companions. Lincoln was his antithesis, as tall, long-drawn, and somber as the cold-water man he was rated. He rose, and at once shot his shaft:

"I was not aware that Mr. Douglas' father was a cooper, but I doubt it not, or that he was a good one. In fact, I am certain that he has made one of the best whisky-casks I have ever seen!"

FIGHTING OUT OF ONE COAT INTO THE OTHER.

"I remember being once much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engaged in a fight, with their greatcoats on, which fight, after a long and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat and into that of the other! If the two leading parties of to-day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two drunken men."--(Letter declining a Jefferson banquet invitation, Springfield, Illinois, April 6, 1859.)

THE PROMISING FACE!

"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land offices, marshalships and cabinet appointments, chargé-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.... On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out."--(Speech by A. Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, July 17, 1858.)

"A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND."

This often-quoted passage was uttered in June, 1857, at Springfield, Illinois, during Lincoln's congressional campaign:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot endure permanently, half-slave and half-free. I do not expect this house to fall: I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become one thing or the other."

THE CONCERT ON "DRED SCOTT."

The Supreme Court of the United States decided in a fugitive-slave case, one Dred Scott, that no negro slave could be any State citizen; that neither Congress nor a territorial organization can exclude slavery; that the United States courts would not decide whether a slave in a free State becomes free, but left that to the slave-holding State courts. Lincoln, in debate with Senator Douglas, asserted that the latter, Chief Justice Taney, and others, were in a league to perpetuate slavery and extend it.

"We cannot absolutely know, but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen--as Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James (Douglas, President Pierce, Taney, Buchanan), and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or mill ... in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen, and Franklin, and Roger, and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck." --(The "Divided House" Speech, June 17, 1858, Springfield, Illinois.)

PLAYING CUTTLEFISH.

"Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish!--a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes."--(Lincoln in Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Illinois, 1858.)

A VOICE FROM THE DEAD.

"Fellow citizens, my friend, Mr. Douglas, made the startling announcement to-day that the Whigs are dead. If that be so, you will now experience the novelty of hearing a speech from a dead man." With his arms waving like windmill-sails, and his frame vibrating in every one of the seventy-five inches perpendicular, he shrilled: "And I suppose you might properly say, or sing, in the language of the old hymn: 'Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound!'"--(Lincoln-Douglas Debate, 1858.)

"IF I MUST GO DOWN, LET IT BE LINKED TO TRUTH."

In 1856, a red-letter day in American politics, the Republican party was organized at Bloomington, Illinois, and, after his speech at the inauguration, Abraham Lincoln was hailed as the foremost of the league throughout the West. A civil war raged, as he had foretold, in Kansas, through repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and Douglas was forced to about face and actually vote, as senator in Congress against the very measures he advocated, with the Republicans. He sought reelection, and so believed he would allure them over to his side. At the Republican State Convention in June, however, Lincoln was the unanimous representative for Cook County, and he made the celebrated speech known as "The House Divided Against Itself." This discourse had been rehearsed before his clique of friends--the men who afterward boasted that they made the President out of the "little one-horse lawyer of a little one-horse town!" They agreed that it was sound and energetic, but that it would not be politic to speak it then. The Republicans were cautious, and shrank from uniting with the advanced theorists known as the Abolitionists.

Lincoln slowly repeated the debated passage:

"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I will deliver it as written. I would rather be defeated with this expression in the speech than be victorious without it."

Before the persistence the advisers again implored him to moderate the lines. "It would defeat his election--it will kill the embryo party!" and so on.

But after silent reflection, he suddenly and warmly said:

"Friends, if it must be that I must go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to truth--die in the advocacy of what is right and just."

That famous utterance of what was fermenting in the great heart of the people, and which perfect oneness with it and his own, enabled him to be the touchstone of the Satan yet disguised, cleared the sky, and all saw the battle, if not the doom, of the black stain on the United States.

COME ONE, COME ALL!

On his road to inauguration, Lincoln held a reception at Chicago. The autograph fiend was not prominent in the thick crowd, but still several little girls were pushed forward by their besieging mamas and, under pretense of one gift deserving a return, gave flowers, and the spokesgirl said as she waved a sheet of paper:

"Your name, Mr. President, please!"

"But here are several other little girls----"

"They come with me," replied the little miss, with the intention of gaining her end alone.

"Oh, then, as my signature will be little among eight--more paper!"

And he wrote a sentiment on each of eight sheets and affixed his sign manual.

ASSISTING THE INEVITABLE.

In 1854, the Missouri Compromise Bill of 1820, made to shut out the free States from the invasion of slavery, was repealed. The author of this yielding on a vital question to the pro-slavery party was Stephen A. Douglas, leader of the Democrats. He had been Lincoln's early friend, and they were rivals for the hand of the Miss Todd who wedded Lincoln, with spoken confidence, and woman's astonishing art of reading men and the future, that he would attain a loftier station in the national Walhalla than his brilliant and more bewitching adversary. Indignant at this revoke in the great game of immunity which should have been played aboveboard, the lawyer sprang forth from his family peace and studious retirement to fall or fulfil his mission in the irrepressible conflict.

Lincoln delivered a speech at Springfield when the town was crammed by the spectators attending the State Fair. It was rated the greatest oratorical effort of his career, and demolished Douglas' political stand. The State, previously Democratic, slid upon and crushed out Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and a Whig legislature was chosen. Having "the senatorship in his eye," or even a dearer if not a nearer object, Lincoln resigned the seat he won in this revolutionary house. On the other hand, a vacancy in the State senatorship at Washington falling pat, he was set up as Whig candidate. Douglas had selected General James Shields, who had married Miss Todd's sister, but was as antagonistic to his brother-in-law as Douglas himself. The fight was made triangular, by the Anti-Kansas-Nebraska Bill party advancing Lyman Trumbull. Although Shields was not strong enough, a substitute in Governor Mattheson, "a dark horse," uncommitted to either side, came within an ace of election in the ballotage.

SELF-SACRIFICE.

Mr. Lincoln had the finished art of the politician; he had also a magnanimous heart, ready to sacrifice all personal gain to the party. He proposed withdrawing, and throwing all his supporters' votes over to Mattheson--anything to beat Douglas! His friends resisted; he had distinguished himself sufficiently as a "retiring man" in letting Baker get the seat over his head. But he was terribly bent on this stroke of victory. He gave up the reins and, in his great self-sacrifice, passionately exclaimed:

"It must be done!"

He was said to be, then, a fatalist, and so vented this command as if he believed "What must be, must be!" unlike the doubter who said: "No! what must be, won't be!" The Douglasites could not meet this change of base, and Trumbull became senator by the Lincolnites' coalition. Lincoln publicly disavowed any such formal compact.

A FIGHT PROVES NOTHING.

Stung by the repetition here in the West by Horace Greeley's quip upon Douglas, whose trimming lost him supporters, "He is like the man's pig which did not weigh as much as he expected, and he always knew he wouldn't," a partizan of the senator's wanted to challenge Lincoln. The latter declared that he would not fight Judge Douglas or his second.

"In the first place, a fight would prove nothing in issue in this contest. If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove anything, it would prove nothing for me to fight his bottle-holder."

(It is to be borne in mind that the senator had a high reputation as a convivial host, and the toady was believed to be his familiar --"the Bottle Imp.")

"WIN THE FIGHT, OR DIE A-TRYING."

Though Douglas had his misgivings from knowing Lincoln is "the ablest of the Republican party," he was forced by his standing and the pressure of his less dubious followers to accept the oratorical challenge of the other. The trumpeteers at once boasted the Little Giant could make small feed of the animated fence-rail. Lincoln said on the subject to Judge Beckwith, of Danville, on the eve:

"You have seen two men about to fight? Well, one of them brags about what he means to do. The other fellow, he says not a word. He is saving his wind for the fight, and as sure as it comes off, he will win it--or die a-trying!"

PILLS TO PURGE MELANCHOLY.

The Puritanic and classically sedate critics blamed the President for finding recreation in reading and hearing comic tales, used to illustrate grave texts. He said to a congressman who brought up the censure at a time when the country was profoundly harried:

"Were it not for this occasional vent, I should die!"

"DOWN TO THE RAISINS!"

It was the regular habit of President Lincoln to read the day's telegrams in order in the "flimsy" triplicates. They were kept in a drawer at the White House telegraph-office. As he handled the papers almost solely, each addition would come to be placed on the last lot of the foregoing day. When this was attained, he would say with a sigh:

"There, I have got down to the raisins!"

It was due to the story, which amused him, of the countryman. This tourist entered a fashionable restaurant, and on viewing the long menu, and concluding that all the dishes were for the customer at the fixed price, manfully called for each in turn. When he arrived at the last line, he sighed in relief, and cried:

"Thanks be! I have got down to the raisins!"

GIANT AND GIANT-KILLER.

As Stephen A. Douglas, from his concentrated force and limited height was nicknamed "the Little Giant," his opponent, the elongated Lincoln, was dubbed "the Giant-Killer."

LINCOLN'S "SENTIMENTS" ON A MOOTED POINT.

The President's reply to an autograph fiend who sought his signature, appended to a sentiment, was:

"DEAR MADAM: When you ask a stranger for that which is of interest only to yourself, always enclose a stamp."

CHESTNUTS UNDER A SYCAMORE.

The President, on his way to the Department of War, perceived a gentleman under a tree, scraping among the heaped leaves with his cane. He knew him, a Major Johnson, of the department, an old District of Columbia man who had never been out of the district.

"Good morning, major!" hailed the executive officer. "What in the world are you doing there?"

"Looking for a few horse-chestnuts."

"Eh? Do you expect to find them under a sycamore-tree?" The President laughed freely and passed on. He ought to have removed the misguided botanist into the Department of Agriculture, where he might have learned something.

STILL OF LITTLE NOTE.

On hearing that a man had been arrested in Philadelphia for trying to procure $1,500 by a forgery of Lincoln's name, he humorously said: "It is surprising that any man could get the money!"

The secretary pointed out that use might have been made of a signature given to a stranger as an autograph on a blank paper, the body of which had been improperly filled up as a note.

"Well," answered the President, then, as to interfering, "I don't see but that he will have to sit on 'the blister-bench.'"

THE TREE-TOAD AND "TIMOTHEUS."

In the early days when Abraham Lincoln went with his pioneer father to settle in wild Indiana, the chief diversion of the rude inhabitants was from the preaching of the traveling pastors. They were singular devotees whose sincerity redeemed all their flaws of ignorance, illiteracy, and violence. Abraham, with his inherent proneness toward imitation of oratory, used to "take them off" to the hilarity of the laboring men who formed his first audiences. Out of his recollections came this tale, which he liked to act out with all the quaint tones and gestures the subject demanded.

The itinerant ranters held out at a schoolhouse near Lincoln's cabin; but in fine weather preferred the academy--as the Platoists would say--what was left of an oak grove, only one tree being spared, making a pulpit with leafy canopy for the exhorter. This man was a Hard-shell Baptist, commonly imperturbable to outside sights and doings when the spirit moved him. His demeanor was rigid and his action angular and restricted. He wore the general attire, coonskin cap or beaver hat, hickory-dyed shirt, breeches loose and held up by plugs or makeshift buttons, as our ancestors attached undergarments to the upper ones by laces and points. The shirt was held by one button in the collar.

This dress little mattered, as a leaf screen woven for the occasion hid the lower part of his frame and left the protruding head visible as he leaned forward, standing on a log rolled up for the platform.

He gave out the text, from Corinthians: "Now if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear; for he worketh the work of the law." The following runs: "Let no man despise him," etc.

As he began his speech, a tree-toad that had dropped down out of the tree thought to return to its lookout to see if rain were coming. As the shortest cut it took the man as a post. Scrambling over his yawning, untanned ankle jack-boots, it slipped under the equally yawning blue jeans. He commenced to scale the leg as the preacher became conscious of the invasion. So, while spooning out the text, he made a grab at the creature, which might be a centipede for all he knew; and then, as it ascended, and his voice ascended a note or two, with the words "be without fear," he slapped still higher. Then, still speaking, but fearsomely animated, he clutched frantically, but always a leetle behindhand, at the unknown monster which now reached the imprisoning neckband. Here he tore at the button--the divine, not the newt--and broke it free! As he finally yelled--sticking to the sermon as to the hunt, "worketh the work of the law!" an old dame in among the amazed congregation rose, and shrieked out:

"Well, if you represent Timotheus and that is working for the law--then I'm done with the Apostles!"

"IF IT WILL DO THE PRESIDENT GOOD--"

G. H. Stuart, chief of the Christian Commission, was a Bible distributer during the war. The organization had a special soldiers' Bible called the Cromwell one, whose mixture of warrior and preacher seemed to couple him with Abraham Lincoln. The soldiers usually accepted a copy without pressing, though some said they preferred a cracker. But one man, a Philadelphian, like Stuart himself, rejected the offer. Among the colporteur's arguments, however, was one that overcame him.

"I'll tell you that I commenced my tract distribution at the White House, and the first person I offered one to was Abraham Lincoln. He took it and promised to read it."

"I'll take one," promptly cried the man; "if the President thought it would do him good, it won't hurt me!"

GROUNDS FOR A FINANCIAL ESTIMATE.

When the mercantile agencies were young, they acquired a consensus of opinion upon a business man by annoying his acquaintances with inquiries. One such house queried of Lincoln about one of his neighbors. His reply was a smart burlesque on the bases on which they rated their registered "listed."

"I am well acquainted with Mr. X----, and know his circumstances. First of all, he has a wife and baby; together, they ought to be worth $50,000 to any man. Secondly, he has an office in which there is a table worth $1.50, and three chairs worth, say, $1. Last of all, there is in one corner a large rat-hole, which will bear looking into! Respectfully, etc."

"I WANTED TO SEE THEM SPREAD!"

It is related that the ushers and secret service officials on duty at the Executive Mansion during the war were prone to congregate in a little anteroom and exchange reminiscences. This was directly against instructions by the President.

One night the guard and ushers were gathered in the little room talking things over, when suddenly the door opened, and there stood President Lincoln, his shoes in his hand.

All the crowd scattered save one privileged individual, the Usher Pendel, of the President's own appointment, as he had been kind to the Lincoln children.

The intruder shook his finger at him and, with assumed ferocity, growled:

"Pendel, you people remind me of the boy who set a hen on forty-three eggs."

"How was that, Mr. President?" asked Pendel.

"A youngster put forty-three eggs under a hen, and then rushed in and told his mother what he had done.

"'But a hen can't set on forty-three eggs,' replied the mother.

"'No, I guess she can't, but I just wanted to see her spread herself.'

"That's what I wanted to see you boys do when I came in," said the President, as he left for his apartments.--(By Thomas Pendel, still usher, in 1900.)

THE LINCOLN NON SEQUITUR.

Though a Democrat, Member of Congress John Ganson, of New York, supported the President, and he thought himself entitled to enjoy what no one had surprised or captured--the confidence of Abraham's bosom, as was the current phrase. He, calling, insisted that he ought to know the true situation of things military and political, so that he might justify himself among his friends. Ganson was bald as the egg and was the most clean-shaven of men. The "Northern Nero" eyed the presumptuous satrap fixedly, and drawled:

"Ganson, how clean you shave!"

He had escaped another inquisition by his close shave. (Told by Senator C. M. Depew.)

WHY SO MANY COMMON PEOPLE.

Like another Daniel, Lincoln interpreted dreams. He said that he had one in this guise:

He imagined he was in a great assemblage like one of his receptions multiplied. The mass described a hedge to let him pass. He thought that he heard one of them remark:

"That is a common-looking fellow!"

To whom Lincoln replied--still in the dream:

"Friend, the Lord loves common-looking people--that is why He made so many of them."

(NOTE.--Another current saying substitutes "the poor" for "common.")

ENVY OF A HUMORIST.

It is difficult for the present generation to perceive the streak of fun in "the Petroleum V. Nasby Papers" which regaled our grandfathers, and Mr. Lincoln above others, who waited eagerly for the next letter in the press. He requested the presentation of the author, John Locke, and thanked him face to face--neither, like the augurs, able to keep his face--for such antidotes to the blues. He said to a friend of "the Postmaster at Confedrit X-rodes":

"If 'Petroleum' would impart his talent to me, I would swap places with him!"

THE STOPPER ON JOURNALISTIC "GAS."

Having examined a model cannon devised not to allow the escape of gas, he quizzically glanced at the group of newspaper reporters, and said:

"I really believe this does what it is represented to do. But do any of you know of any machine or invention for preventing the escape of gas from newspaper establishments?"

SALT BEFORE PEPPER.

The Cabinet being assembled in September, 1862, to consider the first draft of the Emancipation Act, those not yet familiar with the chairman's habit to supply a whet before the main dish, were startled that he should preface the business by reading the New York paper-- Vanity Fair--continuing the series of "Artemus Ward's" tour with his show. This paper was the "High-handed Outrage at Utica." He laughed his fill over it, while the grave signiors frowned and yet struggled to keep their countenances.

If they had more experience, they would have heard him read "Josh Billings," particularly "On the Mule," from the New York Weekly columns. It was as "good as a play," the stenographers said, to see the President dart a glance over his spectacle-rims at some demure counselor whose molelike machinations were more than suspected, and with mock solemnity declaim:

"'I hev known a mewl to be good for six months jest ter git a chance to kick his owner!'" In allusion to those remarkable feats of arms and--legs--Early's or Stuart's raids and Jackson's forced rapid marches, almost at horse-speed, when the men carried no rations, but ate corn-ears taken from the shucks and roasted them "at their pipes," the droll ruler would bring in that "mewl" again:

"'If you want to find a mewl in a lot, you must turn him into the one next to it.'"

Only the rebel "fly-by-nights" were more like the Irishman's flea--"when you put your hand on him, he was not there!"

"MATCHING" STORIES.

The President looking in at the telegraph-room in the White House, happened to find Major Eckert in. He saw he was counting greenbacks. So he said jokingly:

"I believe you never come to business now but to handle money!"

The officer pleaded that it was a mere coincidence, and instanced a story in point:

"A certain tailor in Mansfield, Ohio, was very stylish in dress and airy in manner. Passing a storekeeper's door one day, the latter puffed himself up and emitted a long blow, expressive of the inflation to oozing-point of the conceited tailor, who indignantly turned and said: 'I will teach you to blow when I am passing!' to which the storekeeper replied: 'And I'll teach you not to pass when I am blowing!'"

"Very good!" returned the hearer. "That is very like a story I heard of a man driving about the country in an open buggy, caught at night by a pouring rain. Passing a farmhouse, a man, apparently struggling with the effects of whisky, thrust his head out of a window, and shouted loudly:

"'Hello!'

"The traveler stopped for all of his hurry for shelter and asked what was wanted.

"'Nothing of you!' was the blunt reply.

"'Well, what in the infernals are you shouting 'Hello' for when people are passing?' angrily asked the traveler.

"'Well, what in the infernals are you passing for when people are shouting hello?'"

The rival story-tellers parted "at evens."

THE ONLY DISCREDIT.

A backhanded compliment of the acutest nature is credited to Lincoln as a lawyer and gentleman. A Major Hill accused him of maligning Mrs. Hill, upon which Lincoln denied the accusation and apologized with "whitewash" which blacked the bystander:

"I entertain the highest regard for Mrs. Hill, and the only thing I know to her discredit is that she is Major Hill's wife!"

NO RE-LIE-ANCE OF THEM!

Mrs. Secretary Welles, more susceptible about press attacks on her idol--and everybody in Washington officialdom's idol--the President, called attention to fresh quips and innuendoes.

"Pshaw! let pass; the papers are not always reliable. That is to say, Mrs. Welles," interposed the object of the missiles, "they lie, and then they re-lie!"

NO VICES--FEW VIRTUES.

Some one was smoking in the presence of the President, and had complimented him on having no vices--such as drinking or smoking.

"That is a doubtful compliment," said the host. "I recollect being once outside a coach in Illinois, and a man sitting beside me offered me a. cigar. I told him I had no vices. He said nothing, smoked for some time, and then grunted out:

"'It's my experience that folks who have no vices have plaguey few virtues.'"

(Mrs. General Lander--Miss Jean Davenport, of stage life, the original of Dickens' "Miss Crummies"--must have heard this in the presidential circle, for she would say: "If a man has no petty vices, he has great ones.")

A later version ascribes the reproof to a brother Kentuckian, also a stage companion, variation sufficient to prove the happening.

THE APPLES OF HIS EYE.

"Up in the State, out my way," says the narrator, "there was a farmer in the days when his sort were not called agriculturists; he kep' an orchard, at the same time, without being called a horticulturist. He was just another kind of 'Johnny Appleseed,' for he doted on apples and used to beg slips and seeds of any new variety until he had one hundred and eighty-two trees in his big orchard. I have counted them and longed for them, early, mid, and late harvest--he fit off the bug and the blight and the worm like a wizard. If there was any one thing save his orchard he doted upon it was a daughter o' his'n, her name being Rose, and all that you can cram of lush and bright-red and rosy-posy nicety into that name. An' yet he hankered much on the latest addition to his garden--a New York State apple as he sent for and 'tended to at great outlay of time, anyway. 'This here daughter' and 'that there apple-tree' were his delights. You might say the Rose and the Baldwin, that were the brand of the fruit, were the apples of his two eyes!

"Well, there were two men around there, who cast sheep's eyes, not to say wolfish ones, at the fruit and the girl. They Both expected to have the other by getting the one. Well, one of those days the pair of young fellers lounged along and kinder propped up the old man's fence around the orchard. They was looking out of the tail of the eye more for the Rose than the other thing in the garden. But they could not help spying the Baldwin. It was the off year, anyhow, for apples, and this here one being first in fruiting had been spared in but one blossom, and so the old man cared for it with prodigious love. As mostly comes to pass with special fruit, this one being petted, throve--well, you have no idea how an apple tended to can thrive. It was big and red and meller! Well, one of the fellers, being the cutest, he saw the other had his cane with him and was spearing a windfall every now and then, and seeing how close he could come to flipping the ears of a hog wallering down the lane, or mayhap a horse looking over the paddock fence. Then a notion struck him.

"'Lem,' said he, for the rival's name was Lem, for Lemuel; 'Lem,' he says, 'I bet you a dollar you can't fire at that lone apple and knock it off the stem--a dollar coin!' For they were talking in coonskins them times. So Lem he takes the bet, and, sticking an apple on the switch, sends it kiting with such accuracy of aim that it plumps the Baldwin, ker-chung! in the plum center, and away fly both apples. Then, while he grabbed the dollar--the girl and the old soul come out, and the old soul see the pet apple rolling half-dented at his feet, and the girl ran between him and the two men. But the feller who was such a good shot, he sees a leetle too late what he had lost for a dollar and he scooted, with the old man invoking all the cusses of Herod agin' him.

"The other feller he opened the gate as bold as a brazen calf, and said, anticipating the old man:

"'Oh, I don't come for apples--I want to spark your darter!'"

THE WHETSTONE STORY.

Abraham Lincoln was not given to boasting, but he did pride himself on his gift of memory of faces. It included all sorts of things. Among the soldiers calling at the White House was one from his section. He knew him at sight, used his name, and said:

"You used to live on the Danville road. I took dinner with you one time I was running for the legislature. I recollect that we stood talking together out at the barnyard gate while I sharpened my jack-knife on your whetstone."

"So you did!" drawled the volunteer, delighted. "But, say, whatever did you do with that stone? I looked for it mor'n a thousand times, but I never could find it after the day you used it! We 'lowed that mebby you took it along with you."

"No," replied the presumed purloiner seriously, "I sot it on the top of the gate-post--the high one."

"Thunder! likely enough you did! Nobody else couldn't have boosted it up there! and we never thought to look there for it!"

When the soldier was allowed to go home, the first thing he did was to look up to that stone. Surely enough it was on the gate-post top! It had lain there fifteen years, since the electioneerer had stuck it there as easily as one might place it on a table.

"THE MONARCH OF ALL HE SURVEYED."

Lincoln's coquetting with the science of Gunter, Jack of all trades that he was, empowered him to perpetrate a fine pun on the United States surveyor-general in California, General Beall. This official acquired in his course so much real estate of the first quality that on a reference being made to it in the President's hearing, he observed:

"Yes, they say Beall is 'monarch of all he surveyed.'" (New York Herald.)

MEN HAVE FAULTS LIKE HORSES.

While riding between the court towns, Menard and Fulton Counties, Illinois, Lincoln rode knee to knee with an old settler who admitted that he was going to Lewiston to have some "lawing" out with a neighbor, also an old-timer. The young practitioner already preached, as a motto, that there would always be litigation enough and again exerted to throw oil on the riled water.

"Why, Uncle Tommy, this neighbor has been a tolerable neighbor to you nigh onto fifteen year and you get along in hunk part of the time, don't 'ee?"

The rancantankerous man admitted as much.

"Well, now, you see this nag of mine? He isn't as good a horse as I want to straddle and I sometimes get out of patience with him, but I know his faults as well as his p'ints. He goes fairly well as hosses go, and it might take me a long while to git used to another hoss' faults. For, like men, all hosses hev faults. You and Uncle Jimmy ought to put up with each other as man and his steed put up with one another; see?"

"I reckon you are about right, Abe!"

And he went on to town, but not to "law."

LINCOLN'S PUNS ON PROPER NAMES.

Though as far back as Doctor Johnson, punning was regarded as obsolete, it was still prevalent in the United States and so up to a late date. Mr. Lincoln was addicted to it.

Mr. Frank B. Carpenter was some six months at the presidential mansion engaged on the historical painting of "The President and the Cabinet Signing the Emancipation Act," when the joke passed that he had come in there a Carpenter and would go out a cabinet-maker. An usher repeated it as from the fountain-head of witticism there.

At a reception, a gentleman addressed him, saying: "I presume, Mr. President, you have forgotten me?"

"No! your name is Flood. I saw you last, twelve years ago, at ----. I am glad to see that the Flood still goes on."

The Draft Riots in New York, mid-July, 1863, had, at the bottom, not reluctance to join the army, but a belief among the Democrats, notably the Irish-Americans, that the draws were manipulated in favor of letting off the sons of Republicans. However, the Irish were prominent in resistance. The President said: "General Kilpatrick is going to New York to put down the riots--but his name has nothing to do with it."

In 1856, Lincoln was prosecuting one Spencer for slander. Spencer and a Portuguese, Dungee, had married sisters and were at odds. Spencer called the dark-complexioned foreigner a nigger, and, further, said he had married a white woman--a crime in Illinois at that era. On the defense were Lawrence Weldon and C. H. Moore. Lincoln was teasled as the court sustained a, demurrer about his papers being deficient. So he began, his address to the jury:

"My client is not a negro--though it is no crime to be a negro--no crime to be born with a black skin. But my client is not a negro. His skin may not be as white as ours, but I say he is not a negro, though he may be a Moore!" looking at the hostile lawyer. His speech was so winning that he recovered heavy damages. But being a family quarrel, this was arranged between the two. Mr. Weldon says that he feared Mr. Lincoln would win, as he had said with unusual vehemence:

"Now, by Jing! I will beat you, boys!"

By Jing! (Jingo--St. Gengulphus), was "the extent of his expletives." Byron found a St. Gingo's shrine in his Alpine travels.

On paying the costs, Lincoln left his fee to be fixed by the opposing pair of lawyers, saying: "Don't you think I have honestly earned twenty-five dollars?"

They expected a hundred, for he had attended two terms, spent two days, and the money came out of the enemy's coffer.

NOT SO EASY TO GET INTO PRISON.

William Lloyd Garrison, the premier Abolitionist, was imprisoned in Baltimore for his extreme utterances when a stronghold of the pro-slavery party. After the war, he visited the regenerated city, and, for curiosity, sought unavailingly the jail where he had been confined. On hearing the fruitlessness of his quest, the President said:

"Well, Mr. Garrison, when you first went to Baltimore, you could not get out of prison--but this second time you could not get in!"

"THEM THREE FELLERS AGIN!"

The gamut of possible atrocities in connection with fulfilment of the threats of secession being run through the rumors became stale and flat. Lincoln, receiving one deputation of alarmists with considerable calm, no doubt thought to excuse it by saying:

"That reminds me of the story of the schoolboy. He found great difficulty in pronouncing the names of the three children in the fiery furnace. Yet his teacher had drilled him thoroughly in 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,' so that, one day, he purposely took the same lesson in Bible reading, and managed to have the boy read the passages containing these names again. As the dull pupil came to them he stopped, looked up, and said:

"'Teacher, there's them three fellers ag'in!'"

LINCOLN THE GREAT AND LINCOLN THE LITTLE.

In 1856, the new Republican party tested its strength by offering a ticket: General Fremont, popular through his invasion of California and Rocky Mountain exploration, was selected as the presidential nominee, with Dayton as vice. But during the balloting, Lincoln was opposed to the latter, and received over a hundred votes. This news was despatched to Illinois as a compliment to her "favorite son."

But on going to congratulate "our Lincoln," the deputation found him easy and incredulous on the felicitation.

"You are barking up the wrong tree, neighbors," he said gravely; "that must be the great Lincoln--of Massachusetts."

There was a Levi Lincoln, to whom he had been introduced as a form and as a kinsman of the Massachusetts Lincolns. So the namesake's mistake in modesty was pardonable in one who studied the train of politics most thoroughly since he had said he would be President of these United States. It was in his teens, but the saying is common property of young America, and it is more notable that before he left Indiana, and early in his new and unalterable one in Illinois, his astounded admirers prophesied the same goal; it is a fact that his own hand proves; that in 1854, he says, "I have really got it into my head to be United States senator." [Footnote: Nevertheless, a friend, Speed or Herndon, says, a year or two later, that Lincoln had no more founded idea that he would be President than Emperor of China. It may be permitted to believe that no man is a confidant to his valet or friend.]--(Letter to Joseph Gillespie, preserved in Missouri Historical Society Library.)

"GO, THOU, AND DO LIKEWISE."

Lord Lyons was the British ambassador at Washington when the Prince of Wales--now King Edward--was betrothed to the Princess Alexandra, of Denmark, since queen regent of England. He used the most stilted, ornate, and diplomatic language to carry the simple fact. The President replied offhand with trenchant advice to the bearer, who was unmarried:

"'Go, thou, and do likewise!'"

This did not alter the amity existing between the two, for Lincoln so won upon the envoy that he notified his premier, Lord Russell, at a critical instant when England and France were expected to combine to raise the Southern blockade, that it was wrong to prepare the American Government for recognition of the Confederacy. As for the Russian alliance with the powers, that was a fable, since the czar had sent a fleet to New York, where the admiral had sealed orders to report to President Lincoln in case the European allies' declared war.

In consequence of Lord Lyons opposing the English move, he had to resign.--(A later account in Malet's "Shifting Scenes.")

"IS THE WORLD GOING TO FOLLOW THAT COMET OFF?"

Two gentlemen going by stage-coach from Terre Haute to Indianapolis, in 1858, found one part of the vehicle occupied fully by a tall, countrified person, in a cheap hat and without coat or vest, but a farm roundabout. They had to wake him up, but he was civil and polite enough in his unkempt way. They thought he would be a good butt for play, as educated folk were uncommon out there in 1847, and considered the untaught as their legitimate prey. So they bombarded the poor bumpkin with "wordy pyrotechnics," at which the stranger bewilderingly added his laugh and finally was emboldened to ask what would be the upshot of "this here comet business?"

The comet was the talk, especially in the evening, of the world, as it was taken to forerun disasters. If the editor remembers aright it was sword-shaped. That portends war. The intelligent jesters answered him to confuse still more, and left him at Indianapolis. One of the two travelers was Judge Abram Hammond, and his companion, who tells the story, Thomas H. Nelson, of Terre Haute. The latter, coming down after preening up, found a brilliant group of lights of the law in the main room. They were judges and luminaries of the bar--but who should be the center of the galaxy but the uncouth fellow traveler! All were so interested in a story he was telling that Mr. Nelson could, unnoticed, inquire of the laughing landlord as to the entertainer of these wits.

"Abraham Lincoln, of Sangamonvale, our M. C.!"

He was so stupefied that, on recovery, he hurried upstairs and got Hammond to levant with him. But he was not to remain unpunished. Years after, when Hammond was governor of the State, and he to become minister to Chile, Nelson, was at the same hotel-Browning's--at the capital, when looking over the party welcoming and accompanying the President-elect to Washington, he saw a long arm reached out to his shoulder; a shrill voice pierced his ear:

"Hello, Nelson! do you think, after all, the whole world is going to follow that darned comet [Footnote: Donati's comet.] off?"

The words were Nelson's own in reply to the supposed Reuben's question in the stage-coach twelve years before!

No joke of a memory, that--for a joke!

A GOOD LISTENER.

The invidious who would themselves get a word in, accused Lincoln of monopolizing the conversation where he wished to reign supreme. This is contradicted in several instances. Rather his confraternity describe their meetings as "swapping stories," the flow circulating.

Mr. Bowen pictures Lincoln as getting up half-dressed, after a speech at Hartford, in his hotel bedroom at Mr. Trumbull, of Stonington, rapping at the door. Trumbull had just thought of "another story I want to tell you!" And the tired guest sat up till three in the morning "exchanging stories." This does not resemble monopoly.

A clerk, Littlefield, in the Lincoln-Herndon office, prepared a speech, and said to his senior employer:

"It is important that I get this speech correct, because I think you are going to be the presidential candidate. I told him I would like to read it to him. He consented, sitting down in one corner of the room, with his feet on a chair in front of him.

"'Now,' said he, in his hearty way, 'fire away, John! I think I can stand it.' As I proceeded, he became quite enthusiastic, exclaiming: 'You are hitting the nail on the head.' He broke out several times in this way, finally saying: 'That is going to go.'"

It did go, as the fellow clerk, Ellsworth, of Chicago Zouaves fame, borrowed it, and it disappeared--wads for his revolver, perhaps.

CARRIED THE POST-MATTER IN HIS HAT.

It is to Abraham Lincoln is fastened the joke that as postmaster he carried the mail in his hat. This was at New Salem, postmaster of which he was appointed by President Jackson, as he was the best qualified of any of the burgesses. Indeed, he often had to read letters to their ignorant receivers, and habitually acted as town clerk in reading out newspapers for the general good, on the stoop.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN DUBBED THEM THE "WIDE-AWAKES."

In looking over the illustrated newspapers of the war, one may find drawn the processions anterior to election of the various political parties. Gradually the lines, at first only uniform in certain organizations, became regular as a body. The Republicans at rich Hartford, having funds for the purpose, formed a corps of three or four hundred young men. They drilled to march creditably, assumed a kind of uniform: a cape to shed sparks and oil from the torches, and swinging lamps carried; and a hat, proof also to fire, water, and missiles!

In March, 1860, Mr. Lincoln paid a visit to the college city to speak at the old City Hall. He was introduced as one who had "done yeoman service for the young party (the Republican)." The word yeoman was under stood in the old English sense of the small independent farmers. Old Tom Lincoln's boy came into this class. He assented to it and even lowered the level by presenting himself as a hard worker in the cause--"a dirty shirt" of the body. After the meeting, the marchers surrounded the speaker's "public carriage" to escort him to the mayor's house. His introducer was Sill, later lieutenant-governor of the State. To him the guest observed on the ride:

"Those boys are wide-awake! Suppose (they were seeking a name) we call them, the Wide-awakes?"

The name was enthusiastically adopted. The wide felt hat, with one flap turned up, was called the Wide-awake, but the election marchers did not wear them at all. Lincoln had added a new word to the language.

TRUST TO THE OLD BLUE SOCK.

Several incidents in Lincoln's early career earned him the title of "honest," confirmed by his uncommon conduct as a lawyer; [Footnote: The Honest Lawyer. It is said that he was amused by the conjunction, which he observed, to an adviser who turned him into the legal field, was rather a novelty. He thought of the story of the countryman who saw a stranger by the God's acre, staring at a gravestone, without however any emotion on his face to betray he was a mourner. On the contrary, the man wore a puzzled smile, which piqued him to inquire the cause.

"Relative of yours?" asked the native.

"No, not at all, except through Adam. But," reading the epitaph, "'X., an honest man, and a lawyer.' Why, how did they come to bury those two men in one grave?'"] but a principal event was in connection with his postmastership. It was in 1833. After renouncing the position, he removed to Springfield to take up the study of the law. An agent from the Post-office Department called on him to settle his accounts; through some oversight he had been left undisturbed for some years. He was living with a Mr. Henry, who kept a store, anterior to his lodging in Mr. Speed's double-bedded room. As he was poverty-stricken and had been so since quitting home. Mr. Henry, hearing that a matter of fifteen or twenty dollars was due the government, was about to loan it, when Lincoln, not at all disquieted, excused himself to the man from headquarters to go over to his boarding-house. Usually when a debtor thus eclipses himself the official expects to learn he is a defaulter and has "taken French leave," as was said on the border. But the ex-postmaster immediately came over, and, producing an old blue woolen sock, such as field-hands wore, poured out coin, copper and silver, to the exact amount of the debit. Much as the poor adventurer needed cash in the interval, the temptation had not even struck him to use the trust--the government funds. He said to partner Herndon he had promised his mother never to use another's money.

IF ALL FAILED, HE COULD GO BACK TO THE OLD TRADE!

The Illinois Republican State Convention of 1860 met at Decatur, in a wigwam built for the purpose, a type of that noted in the Lincoln annals as at Chicago. A special welcome was given to Abraham Lincoln as a "distinguished citizen of Illinois, and one she will ever be delighted to honor." The session was suddenly interrupted by the chairman saying: "There is an old Democrat outside who has something to present to the convention."

The present was two old fence-rails, carried on the shoulder of an elderly man, recognized by Lincoln as his cousin John Hanks, and by the Sangamon folks as an old settler in the Bottoms. The rails were explained by a banner reading:

"Two rails from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks, in the Sangamon Bottom, in the year 1830."

Thunderous cheers for "the rail-splitter" resounded, for this slur on the statesman had recoiled on aspersers and was used as a title of honor. The call for confirmation of the assertion led Lincoln to rise, and blushing--so recorded--said:

"Gentlemen: I suppose you want to know something about those things. Well, the truth is, John and I did make rails in the Sangamon Bottom." He eyed the wood with the knowingness of an authority on "stumpage," and added: "I don't know whether we made those rails or not; the fact is, I don't think they are a credit to the makers!" It was John Hanks' turn to blush. "But I do know this: I made rails then, and, I think, I could make better ones now!"

Whereupon, by acclamation, Abraham Lincoln was declared to be "first choice of the Republican party in Illinois for the Presidency."

Riding a man in on a rail became of different and honorable meaning from that out.

This incident was a prepared theatrical effect. Governor Oglesby arranged with Lincoln's stepbrother, John D. Johnston, to provide two rails, and, with Lincoln's mother's cousin, Dennis Hanks, for the latter to bring in the rails at the telling juncture. Lincoln's guarded manner about identifying the rails and sly slap at his ability to make better ones show that he was in the scheme through recognizing that the dodge was of value politically.

(Confirmed by several present, notably by Missouri Congressman John Davis, who was taking notes, and by the present Speaker, Joseph Cannon, also "a gentleman from Illinois." He was at this meeting and saw Lincoln standing on the platform, between the rails he split. He thought then that the orator's years of hard work and close study told on him and that serious illness impended. It may be added, as a link with the past, that on hearing; Lincoln and Douglas in their debates, his courage and hopes as to advance through public speaking fell; yet he was State attorney.)

AS A LIGHT PORTER.

One morning when Lawyer Lincoln was walking from his house to the state-house, at Springfield, he spied a child weeping at a gate. The girl had been promised a trip by the railroad-cars for the first time; all was arranged for her to meet another little companion and travel with her, but she was detained from getting out for the station, as no one was about to carry her trunk. She drew the conclusion that she must lose her train, and she burst into fresh tears.

The box in question was a toy casket proportionate to her size. Lincoln smiled, and that almost dismissed her tears if not her fears. They were immediately dispelled, however, by his cheerily crying out:

"Is that all? Pooh-pooh! Dry your eyes and step out."

He reached over the fence and lifted clear across to him the trunk. He raised it on his shoulder with the other hand, crossing as a corn-bag is carried. He grabbed her by the hand just as the tooting of the train whistle was heard in the mid-distance. So half-lugging her, the pair hurried along to the depot, reaching it as the cars rolled in and pulled up.

He put her on the car, kissed her, and cheered her off with:

"Now, have a real good time with your auntie!"

Always wanting to relieve somebody of a burden, you see!

WHISKERED, TO PLEASE THE LADIES AND GET VOTES.

As Mr. Lincoln was utterly unknown in the East, the "engineers" of his campaign for President planned to have him make himself liked by a tour of the Middle and Northern States. To lessen the impression from one unprepossessing in aspect, "some fixing up" was compulsory. The journalist, Stephen Fiske, recites that on arriving at New York, Mrs. Lincoln, a sort of valet for the trip, had hand-bag of toilet essentials, and that she "brushed his hair, and arranged that snaky black necktie of his--which would twist up and play the shoe-string in five minutes after adjustment. But it was not she, as thought, who coaxed him into making the lower part of his features become cavernous as strong feeling surged upon him. He revealed the source of the improvement.

"Two young ladies in Buffalo wrote me that they wanted their fathers and sweethearts to vote for me, but I was so homely-looking that the men refused! The ladies said that if I would only grow whiskers (what were called "weepers," or the Lord Dundreary mode, was popular) it would improve my appearance, and I would get four more votes! I grew the whiskers!"

(In the Lincoln iconology, his pictures before and after the whiskers is a distinction.)

AFTER VOTES.

Lincoln had become the readiest of public speakers by his long experience. So it was matter for surprise that he, famed for rapid repartee, should have refrained from taking any notice of an interrupter whose shout could have been turned on him; so thought a friend on the platform.

"Why don't you answer him?"

"I am after votes and that man's is as good as any other man's!" replied Mr. Lincoln.

(The Honorable Mr. Palmer says of above: "Mr. Lincoln told me this.")

THE HIGHWAYMAN'S NON SEQUITUR.

"But you will not abide the election of a Republican President? In that supposed event, you say you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool! A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth: 'Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you--and then you will be a murderer!'"--(Speech, New York City, February 27, 1860.)

"HOW TO GET MEN TO VOTE!"

"Let them go on with their howling! (Political opponents.) They will succeed when, by slandering women, you get them to love you, or by slandering men you get them to vote for you!"

BEGINNING AT THE HEAD WITH CLOTHING.

Upon Mr. Lincoln's nomination in 1860, a hatter sent him a silk hat for the advertisement and send-off. He put it on before the glass, and said to his wife:

"Well, Mary, we are going to have some new clothes out of this job, anyway!"

"LUCE A JUG--THE HANDLE ALL ONE SIDE."

Lincoln's intimates thought it remarkable that he should keep his finger on the political pulse and show himself as fully cognizant of the trend of popular feeling. Oddly enough the professional politicians themselves would not own that he was a king among them, though Douglas affirmed him to be in his time the most able man in the Republican party. On clashing returns coming in, he humorously remarked on two reports: "If that is the way doubtful districts are coming in, I will not stop to hear from the certain ones." He observed to Alexander H. Rice, then up for Congress in Massachusetts: "Your district is a good deal like a jug--the handle is all one side!"

"SUCH A SUCKER AS ME, PRESIDENT!"

When Lincoln's wife, at his prospect of being United States senator was on the verge of realization, reminded him of her prophecy, away back in the fifties, that he would attain the highest niche--the inevitable feminine "I told you so!" he clasped his knees in keen enjoyment, and, laughing a roar, cried out:

"Think of such a sucker as me as President!"

But presently, he said with his dry smile: "But I do not pretend I do not want to go to the Senate!"--(Henry Villard, then newspaper reporter.)

ONE HAPPY DAY.

To his friend Bowen, Lincoln avowed during the electioneering-time that he was sure "from the word go," to become President, though the split of the opposition into three parties was materially helpful: Douglas, Bell, and Breckenridge. He thought the reward due him as having gone "his whole length" for the Republican party, almost his creation. So he frankly said on his success:

"I cannot conceal the fact that I am a very happy man. Who could help being so under such circumstances?"--(To H. C. Bowen, of the New York Independent.)

OLD ABE WILL LOOK BETTER WHEN HIS HAIR IS COMBED.

"Did I ever tell you the joke the Chicago newsboys had on me? (To the War Department telegraph manager, A. B. Chandler.) A short time before my nomination (for President), I was at Chicago attending to a lawsuit. A photographer asked me to sit for a picture, and I did so. This coarse, rough hair of mine was in particularly bad tousle at the time, and the picture presented me in all its fright. After my nomination, this being about the only picture of me there was, copies were struck off to show those who had never seen me how I looked. The newsboys carried them around to sell, and had for their cry:

"'Here's your "Old Abe"--he will look better when he gets his hair combed!'"

He laughed heartily, says Mr. Chandler.

NOTE.--Mrs. Lincoln seems to have perceived this bar to her husband's facial beauty. For the journalist, Fiske, relating the arrival of the Lincolns in New York for the Eastern tour in 1860, speaks thus of the toilet to befit him for the reception by Mayor Fernando Wood:

"The train stopped, and Mrs. Lincoln opened her handbag, and said:

"'Abraham, I must fix you up a bit for these city folks.'

"Mr. Lincoln gently lifted her upon the seat before him. (She was an undersized, stout woman.) She parted, combed, and brushed his hair.

"'Do I look nice, now, mother?' he affectionately asked.

"'Well, you'll do, Abraham,' replied Mrs. Lincoln critically."

A CURIOUS COMBINATION.

When the names of Lincoln and Hamlin were painted large on the street banners, it was immediately noticed that a singular effect appeared, as

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

One of the anagrams upon the President had, at least, peculiar signification:

Abraham Lincoln: O ba! an III. charm.

It was Hamlin who proposed at the Lincoln Club, of New York, that a day should be set aside as "the Lincoln Day."

THE SNAKE SIMILE.

"If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it. But if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. Much more if I found it abed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn contract not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. But--if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide." --(Speech by Abraham Lincoln at New York Cooper Institute, and repeated through Connecticut, 1860.)

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The Reverend Doctor Moore, of Richmond, derived Lincoln from two words, meaning: "On the precipice verge," and Davis as interpretable as "God with us."

PAYING FOR WHISKY HE DID NOT DRINK.

In 1858, Mr. Lincoln was campaigning in Ohio, and staying in Cincinnati at the Burnett House, it was the meeting-place of the party of which he was the looming light. Some of the younger Republicans (says Murat Halstead, there as a newspaper man) had refreshments in his rooms, and from some stupid oversight, allowed the whisky and cigars to be included in his bill. This raised a hot correspondence between them and the guest, ticklish about his lifelong abstinence principles. Mr. Halstead said that the episode rankled in the blunderers after they had elected their pride President. He must have felt like the gentleman at the inn dining-room who, falling asleep at his meal, had the fowl consumed by some merry wags; then greasing his lips with the drumstick, they left him before the carcass so that the host naturally charged him with the feast.

"THE HIGHEST MERIT TO THE SOLDIER."

"This extraordinary war in which we are engaged falls heavily upon all classes of people, but the most heavily upon the soldier. For it has been said, 'All that a man hath he will give for his life;' and, while all contribute of their substance, the soldier puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his country's cause. The highest merit, then, is due to the soldier."

"HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE?"

If Lincoln did not possess a wide range of reading, he had the habit of committing to memory entire pages of the text he delighted in. The consequence was his invariable ability to not only utter apt quotations at length, but to cap them, if need be. Joining a group of visitors to Washington, at the Soldiers' Home, during the war, he suddenly, but in an undertone, murmured:

How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest?

The women were affected to tears by their susceptible nature, the surroundings of the cemetery with its graves, the evening dusk, and the touching voice with its apposite lines. An effect he redoubled by concluding:

And women o'er the graves shall weep, Where nameless heroes calmly sleep!

THE STOKERS AS BRAVE AS ANY.

The first troops arriving by way of the Potomac River were the volunteers of the first call, ninety-day men; the steamship Daylight--name of good omen! It was torrential rain, but the President and Secretary Seward came out to welcome them on the wharf. As he would give a reception then and there, four sailors held a tarpaulin over his head like a canopy, and he shook hands all around, including the firemen and stokers out of the coal-hole. Grasping their smutty hands, he declared that they were as brave as any one! --(By General Viele, present.)

TRY AND GO AS FAR AS YOU CAN!

On the President, indefatigable in visiting the soldiers anywhere to see "how the boys are getting on," telling the head surgeon at City Point Hospital that he had come to shake hands with all the inmates, the medical authority demurred. There were several thousands in the wards, and any man would be tired before he had gone the grand rounds.

"I think," protested Lincoln, with his set smile and dogged determination to have his own way, "I am quite equal to the task. At any rate, I can try, and go as far as I can!"

It was on this, at another time--there were many of them, alas!--that it being found that the patients in one ward were clamoring because they had been passed over, he insisted on shaking off the fag and going to pay them respect also.

"The brave boys must not be disappointed in their 'Father Abraham!'"

ARGUMENT OF "THE STUB-TAILED COW."

The President had the knack of illustrating a false syllogism by a story from the front. Soldiers stole a cow from a farmyard. It had but the stump of a tail, and foreseeing that there might be a requisition by the owner, who passed for a Union sympathizer, they disguised the creature by attaching a long switch from a dead bovine. Sure enough the man came to headquarters, and from his patriotic plea of having lost much by adhering to the old cause, his demand was accorded. If he could find his lost animal, he was entitled to it and the offenders would be punished. It had not been obtained by the regular forage, that he swore. Well, he was brought by the officer seeing him round to the pen where the beeves were secured which the commissariat duly furnished. Here the rival suppliers had stabled the creature, and she was lashing off the flies with the substitute for the detached tail with supreme felicity in the lost enjoyment. The farmer scanned her with more than a merely suspicious eye, so that the lookers-on grew anxious, and the sub-officer with him, and who thought of his own plate of beef, hastened to say:

"Well, you don't see anything here anywheres like your beastie, do you, old father?"

"I dunno. Thar suttinly is one cow the pictur' of mine--but my Lilywhite was a stump--had a stub-tail, you know!"

"Hum!" said the corporal firmly, "but this here cow has a long tail!--ain't it?"

"True--and mine were a stub--let us seek farther, officer!"

PEGGED OR SEWED?

Shoemaking machinery not having attained the present development which pastes imitation-leather uppers upon paper soles, the soldiers of the first Union Army had to trudge in the boots made with wooden pegs to hold the portions together; in wet weather the pegs swelled and held tolerably, but in dryness the assimilation failed and the upper crust yawned off the base like a crab-shell divided. As for the supposed sewed ones, they went to the sub-officers, but the thread was so poor that parting was as thorough as sudden. Mr. Lincoln wonted, as Walt Whitman says, to repeat this tale when the army contractors were swarming in his room for a bidding:

"A soldier of the Army of the Potomac was being carried to the rear among the other wounded, when he spied one of the women following the army to vend delicacies. In her basket, no doubt, were the cookies to his fancy--the tarts and pies--open or covered. So he hailed her: 'Old lady, are them pies sewed or pegged?'"

SOLDIERING APART FROM POLITICS.

In 1864, a soldier at work on the Baltimore defenses, an outbreak of Southern sympathizers being apprehended, attended a Democratic meeting and made a speech there in favor of its principles and General McClellan as the standard-bearer. Secretary of War Stanton, fierce like all apostates, turned on this Democrat, and his disgrace as to the army was threatened. Captain Andrews went to the fountain-head with his remonstrance. He was right, for Lincoln said:

"Andrews has as good a right to hold onto his Democracy, if he chooses, as Stanton had to throw his overboard. No; when the military duties of a soldier are fully and faithfully performed, he can manage his politics his own way!"

A TIME THAT TRIED THE SOUL.

It was the Pennsylvania governor, Curtin, who brought the bad news from Fredericksburg battle-field, where Burnside was repulsed in December, 1862.

"It was a terrible slaughter--the scene a veritable slaughter-pen."

This blunt trope stirred up Lincoln, who had been a pig-slaughterer in his day, remember. He groaned, wrung his hands, and "took on" with terrible agony of spirit.

"I remember his saying over and over again," says the governor: "'What has God put me in this place for?'"

"CABINET" TALK.

Like all persons whose early life was passed in seclusion from the exhibitions common in society eager for anything to animate jaded nerves, Mr. Lincoln at Washington sought distractions in his brief intervals for them. One of the shows he tolerated--he called all sights so--was the séances of Charles E. Shockle--"Phoebus! what a name!" This medium came to the capital in 1863, under eminent auspices, and the President and his wife, members of the Cabinet, and other first citizens were induced to patronize the illusions. The spirits were irreverent, "pinching Stanton's and plucking Welles' beard." As for the President, a rapping at his feet announced an Indian eager "to communicate."

"Well, sir," said the President, "happy to hear what his Indian majesty has to say. We have recently had a deputation of the red Indians, and it was the only deputation, black, white, or red, which did not volunteer advice about the conduct of the war!"

The writing-under-cover trick was played. A paper covered with Mr. Stanton's handkerchief was found before the President, scrawled with marks interpreted as advice for action, by Henry Knox--no one knew him--but the lecturer said he was the first secretary of war in the Revolution. The recipient said it was not Indian talk!

He transferred it to Mr. Stanton as concerning his province. He asked for General Knox's forecast as to when the rebellion would be put down. The reply was a jumble of wild truisms purporting to be from great spirits, from Washington to Wilberforce.

"Well," exclaimed the President, "opinions differ as much among the saints as among the--ahem--sinners!" He glanced at the cabinet whence the materialized specters were to emerge if called upon, and added: "The celestials' talk and advice sound very much like the talk of my Cabinet!"

He called for Stephen A. Douglas, as his dearest friend, [Footnote: Stephen Arnold Douglas was so patriotic at the Rebellion's outbreak that Lincoln forgave him all the politically, hostile past. Douglas held his new silk hat--Lincoln's abhorrence--at the first inauguration. Douglas left the field for home, where he assisted in raising the first volunteer levy by his eloquence.] to speak, if not appear. The reporter affirms that a voice like the lamented "Little Giant's" was heard and if others thought they recognized it the President must have been more affected than he allowed. But the eloquent statesman also breathed platitudes in which the illustrious auditor said he believed, "whether it comes from spirit or human."

Here Mr. Shockle became prostrated, and Mrs. Lincoln compassionately suggested an adjournment. The Spiritualists did not see the sarcasm in Mr. Lincoln's remarks, and claim that he was not only a convert, but that he was himself a medium. [Footnote: There is serious evidence for this fact; he was, at all events, a Spiritualist. See Was Lincoln a Spiritualist? By Mrs. Nettie Colburn Maynard (1891).]

ON THE BLISTER-BENCH.

At the taking of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, 1862, the steamer Valley City was saved from blowing up by a gunner's-mate. This John Davis coolly sat on a powder-keg from which the top had been shot off, and was so found by an officer, who hastily censured him for his loafing--"bumming" during recess. But, on the reason for his taking his seat being pointed out, Davis was recommended for promotion. In countersigning the papers entitling him to the rank of gunner, at a thousand a year for life, the President mock-solemnly observed:

"Metaphorically, we occupy the same position; we are sitting on the powder under fire!"

"ABE, A THUNDERING OLD GLORY!"

Ex-Registrar Chittenden tells the following incident. It was the 14th of April, 1865. Captain Robert Lincoln, on General Grant's staff, had brought the details of the victory of Appomattox, and the gratified chief had passed the day with the Cabinet revolving those plans of reconstruction which amazed all the world by their exclusion of all bitterness and retaliation. He was coming down the White House stairway to take his accustomed ride in the carriage when he heard a soldier in the waiting crowd say:

"I would almost give my other hand (he was one-armed) if I could shake Abe Lincoln's hand!"

Lincoln confronted him. "You shall do that, and it shall cost you nothing!" interrupted the revivified President, grasping the lone hand, and, while he held it, he asked the man's name, regiment, etc.

The happy soldier, in telling of this meeting, would end: "I tell you, boys, Abe Lincoln is a thundering Old Glory!"

PERFECT RETALIATION.

The more apparent it was that inconsistency reigned ins the Lincolnian Cabinet, the more earnestly the marplots strove to incite them individually against one another and their head. A speculator who had induced the latter to oblige him with a permit to trade in cotton reported with zest how Secretary Stanton had no sooner seen the paper than, instead of countersigning, he tore up the leaf without respect even for the august signature. Stanton was famous for irascibility. And he did not forbear to manifest it toward all, even to the President. But, as the latter observed, hot or cold, Stanton is generally right. This time he was not sorry at heart for the reproof as to his allowing a signal favor which might work harm. But, affecting rage, he blurted out:

"Oh, he tore my paper, did he? Go and tell Stanton that I will tear up a dozen of his papers before Saturday night!"

LET DOWN THE BARS A LEETLE.

One of the mischief-makers abounding in Washington, and doing more harm than all the rebel calumniators, hastened to repeat to the President that the secretary of war had plainly called him a "d---d fool!"

"You don't say so? This wants looking into. For, if Stanton called me that, it must be true!--for he is nearly every time right!" He took his seat, and excused himself, jerking out as he stalked forth, glad to be quit of the pest:

"I will step over and see him!"

He was going to have the bars let down "a leetle."

"THE ADMINISTRATION CAN STAND IT IF THE TIMES CAN."

Mrs. Hugh McCulloch and Mrs. Dole (Indian Commissioner) went to Mrs. Lincoln's reception. The host expressed constant gladness to see the ladies, as "they asked no offices."

Mrs. McCulloch protested that she did want something.

"I want you to suppress the Chicago Times because it does nothing but abuse the Administration."

McCulloch was in the treasury.

"Oh, tut, tut! We must not abridge the liberties of: the press or the people! [Footnote: The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, 1863, was sorely against the President's sentiments, fond of liberty himself and fixed on constitutional rule--but he bowed to the inevitable. Nevertheless, he softened the rod, and many imprisoned under the edict were never brought to trial.] But never mind the Chicago Times! The Administration can stand it, if the Times can."

BOTTLING THAT WASP.

It was confidently forethought by the numerous admirers of Governor Seward--who escaped being the President by a political combination and not want of supreme merit--that he would in the Cabinet, whatever nominally his post, be the ruling spirit. Not a man suspected that the plain man of the prairie could develop into the lord of the manor, and put and keep not only the able and cultured Seward, but the turbulent Stanton and the obstreperous Chase, in their places. The pettifogger of the West simply expanded, like its sunflower, in the fierce white light around the chair, and was the lion, among the lesser creatures.

Seward raised his hand early. Within a month he had the impertinent fatuity to lay before his superior a paper suggesting the policy, and moving that the President might commit to him, the secretary, the carrying out of that policy! With gentle courtesy--says General Viele--Lincoln took the paper from the author and popped it into his portfolio. He had no policy, and did not want another's. He had bottled his wasp. Seward was obedient as the spaniel. His powers were recognized by the villains who comprised him in the detestable plot.

THAT KING LOST HIS HEAD.

In 1865 the President and his state secretary received as peace commissioners Alexander Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell. They wanted recognition of their President, Davis, as head of the Confederated States--an entity. Without stultification, this was impossible. In the course of the discussion, reference was made to King Charles I. of England and his Parliament negotiating--so might the established Washington government treat with the rebel Davis. On Lincoln's features stole that grim smile foretelling his shaft ready to shoot, and he interjected:

"Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted on such things, and I do not profess to be; but my only distinct recollection of that matter is that Charles I. lost his head!"

SWEARING LIKE A CHURCHWARDEN.

To convey the President from General Hooker's camp to the review of General Reynolds' corps, a ride had to be taken in a six-mule ambulance. Either not knowing the rank of his passenger, or being a teamster, which in our army replaces the French sapper for rudeness, the driver showered as many oaths of the largest caliber--fire and fury signifying nothing--as snaps of the long cowhide. Lincoln, who had known the genus in the clay of the West, kept his eye on him while leaning out of the window. In an interval when the vociferator had to take breath, he asked quietly:

"Excuse me, my friend, are you an Episcopalian?"

"N-no, Mr. President," stammered the astonished jehu, "I am a Methodist."

"Well, I thought you must be an Episcopalian, for you swear like Secretary Seward, a warden of that church."

(Seward was the great man of the Republican party, next to Lincoln only in some essentials for political success. While a church member, he was man of the world enough to give a backing to this jest of the President.)

"MY SPEECHES HAVE ORIGINALITY AS THEIR MERIT."

Instead of believing that Lincoln's extraordinary experiences in the multifarious West produced a factotum, his revilers asserted that he looked to one minister for financial instructions, to another for military guidance, etc. But it is true that by tradition, as the premier in fact, the secretary of state is supposed to write the first drafts at least of the presidential speeches to foreign ministers, and, as the secretary was Seward, a man of letters preeminently, he had Lincoln's addresses, even to home delegations, fathered upon him.

The President was chatting in his own study when a messenger ran in with a paper, explaining his haste with the words:

"Compliments of the secretary with the speech your excellency is to make to the Swiss minister."

Anybody else would have been abashed by the seeming exposure, but the executive merely cried aloud as if to publish the facts to the auditory:

"Oh, this is a speech Mr. Seward has written for me. I guess I will try it before these gentlemen, and see how it goes." He read it in the burlesque manner with which he parodied circuit preachers in his boyhood and public speakers in his prime, and added at the close:

"There, I like that. It has the merit of originality!"

RIGHTING WRONG HURTS, BUT DOES GOOD.

In May, 1861, all looked with anxiety to the letter by which the United States of America should reply to Great Britain furnishing the Confederated States with its first encouragement, the rights of belligerents. Without them their privateers were useless, as they could have gone into no ports and sold their prizes nowhere. Mr. Seward was in touch with the New England school. It clamored for war with any friend to the revolting States. But Lincoln corrected what was provocative in the original advice to our minister, Adams, at St. James'. The English were no longer held to have issued a proclamation without due grounds in usage or the law of nations. It became by the modification no more a proceeding about which we could warrantably go to war. For instance, the President changed the words "wrongful" into "hurtful." According to Webster, wrongful means unjust, injurious, dishonest; while hurtful implies that the course will cause injury. The original has vanished in that odd but certain way in which state documents disappear when casting odium on public men; they are mayhap "filed away"--in the stove!

STANTON'S SERVICE WAS WORTH HIS SAUCE.

Among the President's minor worries was the assiduity with which his generosity was cultivated by his relatives--not only those by his marriage, but by his father's second marriage. He was like the eldest son of the family to whom all looked for sustenance. There came to the seat of government that Dennis Hanks, his cousin, who stood to reach for boons on the platform of rails which they had cut long ago in cohort. Dennis was seeking the pardon of some "Copperheads"--that is, Southern sympathizers of the North, veiled in their enmity, but dangerous. The secretary of war had pronounced against any leniency toward what were dubbed glaring traitors. All the chief could do--for he bared his head like Lear to let the Stanton tempest blow upon him and so spare others--was to say he would look at the cases the next day. Hanks was muttering.

"Why, Dennis, what would you do were you President?" he asked the raw backwoodsman, turning badly into suppliant.

"Do? Why, Abe, if I were as big and 'ugly'--aggressively combative--as you are, I would take your Mr. Stanton over my knee and spank him!"

This caused a laugh, but the other replied severely:

"No. Stanton is an able and valuable man for this nation in his station, and I am glad to have his service in spite of his sauce."

A SECRET OF THE INTERIOR.

Lincoln, the junior, "Tad," had the run of the Executive Mansion, and, like all spoiled children, abused the license. He burst into the heart of a company listening to his father's talk with the exclamation:

"Ma says, come to supper!"

It was impossible for the most diplomatic to pretend that he had not heard, and all looked from the intruder to the host. Never at a loss, Mr. Lincoln rose from the sofa, and blandly said as to "married folks together":

"You have heard, gentlemen, the announcement concerning the seductive state of things in the dining-room. I had intended to train up this young man in his father's footsteps, but, if I am elected, I must forego any intention of making him a member of my Cabinet, as he manifestly cannot be trusted with secrets of the interior!"

ALL STAFF AND NO ARMY.

Many of the volunteer officers developed a liking for the new profession, and to secure a permanency obtained entrance into the established army. Among these was one Lieutenant Ben Tappan. Secretary Stanton being his uncle, no difficulty offered but this autocrat ought to remove, but unfortunately Stanton was a stickler for forms, and the relationship looked like nepotism to the world. Tappan particularly wished to stay on the staff on account of the privileges. His stepfather, Frank Wright, induced their congressman, Judge Shellabarger, to accompany him to the presidential mansion to obtain the boon. Lincoln was lukewarm, and told a story about the army being all staff and no strength, saying that, if one rolled a stone in front of Willard's Hotel, the military rendezvous for those officers off duty and on (dress) parade, it must knock over a brigadier or two, but suddenly wrote a paper to this novel effect:

"Lieutenant Ben Tappan, of ---, etc., desires transfer to --- Regiment, regular service, and is assigned to staff duty with present rank. If the only objection to this transfer is Lieutenant Tappan's relationship to the secretary of war, that objection is hereby overruled.

"A. LINCOLN."

This threw the responsibility upon the secretary.

NO MAN IS INDISPENSABLE.

One of the Cabinet ministers disagreed with the majority on a vital question, and rose with a threat to resign. One of his friends advised the chairman to do anything to recover his aid, whereupon he sagely said:

"Our secretary a national necessity?--how mistaken you are! Yet it is not strange--I used to have similar notions. No, if we should all be turned out to-morrow, and could come back here in a week, we should find our places filled by a lot of fellows doing just as well as we did, and in many instances better! It was truth that the Irishman uttered when he answered the speaker: 'Is not one man as good as another?' with 'He is, sure, and a deal betther!' No, sir, this government does not depend on the life of any man!"

SLEEPING ON POST CANCELS A COMMISSION.

Nobody who met Secretary Stanton--the Carnot of the war--would give him credit for joking, but Mr. Lincoln's example that way was infectious. The eldest son, Robert, was at college, but a captaincy was awaiting him when he could enter the army. So the war secretary for a pleasantry issued a mock commission to Tad, ranking him as a regular lieutenant. As long as he confined his supposed duties to arming the under servants and drilling the more or less fantastically, as well as he remembered, evolutions on the parade-grounds, where he accompanied his father, all was amusing. But he terminated his first steps in the school of "Hardee's Tactics," the standard text-book of the period, by bringing his awkward squad from the servants' hall, and, relieving the sentries, replaced the genuine with these tyros. For the sake of the vacation they, the regulars, bowed to the commission with its potent Stanton and Lincoln, and United States Army seal. His brother, startled, intervened, but the cadet vowed he would put him in "the black hole," presumably the coal-shed. The President laughed, and when he went to check the usurpation he found the little lieutenant, overpowered by his brief authority, asleep. So he removed him from the service, put aside his commission, and, when he woke to the situation, made it plain that, being a real soldier and officer, he had forfeited his title by falling asleep on post! He went then and formally discharged the sham sentinels placed by the boy's orders and replaced them by the "simon pures."

MY QUESTION!

A recent volume has undertaken the superfluous vindication of President Lincoln from being the mere ornamental figurehead of the republic during the Civil War. In fact, there are many instances of his incurring the reproach of interfering with the chiefs of departments, but it is testified to by a leading minister that he paid much less attention to details than was popularly supposed and invidiously asserted in the capital. He "brought up with a round turn," to use river language, both General Fremont and other military commanders who tried to steal the finishing weapon he kept in store: to wit, the emancipation of the Southern slaves. Senator Cameron, as war secretary, advised in a report that the slaves should be armed to enable them successfully to rise against their masters. The President scratched out this recommendation, which would have spiked his gun, and perverted a great statesmanlike act into a fostered insurrection, saying: