''Abe'' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Alexander Kelly McClure [suggested reading TXT] 📗

General Fisk wrote his case in outline on a card and sent it in, with a special request that the President would see the man. In a moment the order came; and past impatient senators, governors and generals, the old man went.

He showed his papers to Mr. Lincoln, who said he would look into the case and give him the result next day.

The old man, in an agony of apprehension, looked up into the President’s sympathetic face and actually cried out:

“Tomorrow may be too late! My son is under sentence of death! It ought to be decided now!”

His streaming tears told how much he was moved.

“Come,” said Mr. Lincoln, “wait a bit and I’ll tell you a story;” and then he told the old man General Fisk’s story about the swearing driver, as follows:

“The general had begun his military life as a colonel, and when he raised his regiment in Missouri he proposed to his men that he should do all the swearing of the regiment. They assented; and for months no instance was known of the violation of the promise.

“The colonel had a teamster named John Todd, who, as roads were not always the best, had some difficulty in commanding his temper and his tongue.

“John happened to be driving a mule team through a series of mudholes a little worse than usual, when, unable to restrain himself any longer, he burst forth into a volley of energetic oaths.

“The colonel took notice of the offense and brought John to account.

“‘John,’ said he, ‘didn’t you promise to let me do all the swearing of the regiment?’

“‘Yes, I did, colonel,’ he replied, ‘but the fact was, the swearing had to be done then or not at all, and you weren’t there to do it.’”

As he told the story the old man forgot his boy, and both the President and his listener had a hearty laugh together at its conclusion.

Then he wrote a few words which the old man read, and in which he found new occasion for tears; but the tears were tears of joy, for the words saved the life of his son.

LINCOLN PRONOUNCED THIS STORY FUNNY.

The President was heard to declare one day that the story given below was one of the funniest he ever heard.

One of General Fremont’s batteries of eight Parrott guns, supported by a squadron of horse commanded by Major Richards, was in sharp conflict with a battery of the enemy near at hand. Shells and shot were flying thick and fast, when the commander of the battery, a German, one of Fremont’s staff, rode suddenly up to the cavalry, exclaiming, in loud and excited terms, “Pring up de shackasses! Pring up de shackasses! For Cot’s sake, hurry up de shackasses, im-me-di-ate-ly!”

The necessity of this order, though not quite apparent, will be more obvious when it is remembered that “shackasses” are mules, carry mountain howitzers, which are fired from the backs of that much-abused but valuable animal; and the immediate occasion for the “shackasses” was that two regiments of rebel infantry were at that moment discovered ascending a hill immediately behind our batteries.

The “shackasses,” with the howitzers loaded with grape and canister, were soon on the ground.

The mules squared themselves, as they well knew how, for the shock.

A terrific volley was poured into the advancing column, which immediately broke and retreated.

Two hundred and seventy-eight dead bodies were found in the ravine next day, piled closely together as they fell, the effects of that volley from the backs of the “shackasses.”

JOKE WAS ON LINCOLN.

Mr. Lincoln enjoyed a joke at his own expense. Said he: “In the days when I used to be in the circuit, I was accosted in the cars by a stranger, who said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but I have an article in my possession which belongs to you.’ ‘How is that?’ I asked, considerably astonished.

“The stranger took a jackknife from his pocket. ‘This knife,’ said he, ‘was placed in my hands some years ago, with the injunction that I was to keep it until I had found a man uglier than myself. I have carried it from that time to this. Allow me to say, sir, that I think you are fairly entitled to the property.’”

THE OTHER ONE WAS WORSE.

It so happened that an official of the War Department had escaped serious punishment for a rather flagrant offense, by showing where grosser irregularities existed in the management of a certain bureau of the Department. So valuable was the information furnished that the culprit who “gave the snap away” was not even discharged.

“That reminds me,” the President said, when the case was laid before him, “of a story about Daniel Webster, when the latter was a boy.

“When quite young, at school, Daniel was one day guilty of a gross violation of the rules. He was detected in the act, and called up by the teacher for punishment.

“This was to be the old-fashioned ‘feruling’ of the hand. His hands happened to be very dirty.

“Knowing this, on the way to the teacher’s desk, he spit upon the palm of his right hand, wiping it off upon the side of his pantaloons.

“‘Give me your hand, sir,’ said the teacher, very sternly.

“Out went the right hand, partly cleansed. The teacher looked at it a moment, and said:

“‘Daniel, if you will find another hand in this school-room as filthy as that, I will let you off this time!’

“Instantly from behind the back came the left hand.

“‘Here it is, sir,’ was the ready reply.

“‘That will do,’ said the teacher, ‘for this time; you can take your seat, sir.’”

“I’D A BEEN MISSED BY MYSE’F.”

The President did not consider that every soldier who ran away in battle, or did not stand firmly to receive a bayonet charge, was a coward. He was of opinion that self-preservation was the first law of Nature, but he didn’t want this statute construed too liberally by the troops.

At the same time he took occasion to illustrate a point he wished to make by a story in connection with a darky who was a member of the Ninth Illinois Infantry Regiment. This regiment was one of those engaged at the capture of Fort Donelson. It behaved gallantly, and lost as heavily as any.

“Upon the hurricane-deck of one of our gunboats,” said the President in telling the story, “I saw an elderly darky, with a very philosophical and retrospective cast of countenance, squatted upon his bundle, toasting his shins against the chimney, and apparently plunged into a state of profound meditation.

“As the negro rather interested me, I made some inquiries, and found that he had really been with the Ninth Illinois Infantry at Donelson. and began to ask him some questions about the capture of the place.

“‘Were you in the fight?’

“‘Had a little taste of it, sa.’

“‘Stood your ground, did you?’

“‘No, sa, I runs.’

“‘Run at the first fire, did you?

“‘Yes, sa, and would hab run soona, had I knowd it war comin’.”

“‘Why, that wasn’t very creditable to your courage.’

“‘Dat isn’t my line, sa—cookin’s my profeshun.’

“‘Well, but have you no regard for your reputation?’

“‘Reputation’s nuffin to me by de side ob life.’

“‘Do you consider your life worth more than other people’s?’

“‘It’s worth more to me, sa.’

“‘Then you must value it very highly?’

“‘Yes, sa, I does, more dan all dis wuld, more dan a million ob dollars, sa, for what would dat be wuth to a man wid de bref out ob him? Self-preserbation am de fust law wid me.’

“‘But why should you act upon a different rule from other men?’

“‘Different men set different values on their lives; mine is not in de market.’

“‘But if you lost it you would have the satisfaction of knowing that you died for your country.’

“‘Dat no satisfaction when feelin’s gone.’

“‘Then patriotism and honor are nothing to you?’

“‘Nufin whatever, sat—I regard them as among the vanities.’

“‘If our soldiers were like you, traitors might have broken up the government without resistance.’

“‘Yes, sa, dar would hab been no help for it. I wouldn’t put my life in de scale ‘g’inst any gobernment dat eber existed, for no gobernment could replace de loss to me.’

“‘Do you think any of your company would have missed you if you had been killed?’

“‘Maybe not, sa—a dead white man ain’t much to dese sogers, let alone a dead nigga—but I’d a missed myse’f, and dat was de p’int wid me.’

“I only tell this story,” concluded the President, “in order to illustrate the result of the tactics of some of the Union generals who would be sadly ‘missed’ by themselves, if no one else, if they ever got out of the Army.”

IT ALL “DEPENDED” UPON THE EFFECT.

President Lincoln and some members of his Cabinet were with a part of the Army some distance south of the National Capital at one time, when Secretary of War Stanton remarked that just before he left Washington he had received a telegram from General Mitchell, in Alabama. General Mitchell asked instructions in regard to a certain emergency that had arisen.

The Secretary said he did not precisely understand the emergency as explained by General Mitchell, but had answered back, “All right; go ahead.”

“Now,” he said, as he turned to Mr. Lincoln, “Mr. President, if I have made an error in not understanding him correctly, I will have to get you to countermand the order.”

“Well,” exclaimed President Lincoln, “that is very much like the happening on the occasion of a certain horse sale I remember that took place at the cross-roads down in Kentucky, when I was a boy.

“A particularly fine horse was to be sold, and the people in large numbers had gathered together. They had a small boy to ride the horse up and down while the spectators examined the horse’s points.

“At last one man whispered to the boy as he went by: ‘Look here, boy, hain’t that horse got the splints?’

“The boy replied: ‘Mister, I don’t know what the splints is, but if it’s good for him, he has got it; if it ain’t good for him, he ain’t got it.’

“Now,” said President Lincoln, “if this was good for Mitchell, it was all right; but if it was not, I have got to countermand it.”

TOO SWIFT TO STAY IN THE ARMY.

There were strange, queer, odd things and happenings in the Army at times, but, as a rule, the President did not allow them to worry him. He had enough to bother about.

A quartermaster having neglected to present his accounts in proper shape, and the matter being deemed of sufficient importance to bring it to the attention of the President, the latter remarked:

“Now this instance reminds me of a little story I heard only a short time ago. A certain general’s purse was getting low, and he said it was probable he might be obliged to draw on his banker for some money.

“‘How much do you want, father?’ asked his son, who had been with him a few days.

“‘I think I shall send for a couple of hundred,’ replied the general.

“Why, father,’ said his son, very quietly, ‘I can let you have it.’

“‘You can let me have it! Where did you get so much money?

“‘I won it playing draw-poker with your staff, sir!’ replied the youth.

“The earliest morning train bore the young man toward his home, and I’ve been wondering if that boy and that quartermaster had happened to meet at the same table.”

ADMIRED THE STRONG MAN.

Governor Hoyt of Wisconsin tells a story of Mr. Lincoln’s great admiration for physical strength. Mr.