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

official acts, I shall not complain of them. I accord them the utmost freedom of speech and liberty of the press, but shall not change the policy I have adopted in the full belief that I am right.

“I feel on this subject as an old Illinois farmer once expressed himself while eating cheese. He was interrupted in the midst of his repast by the entrance of his son, who exclaimed, ‘Hold on, dad! there’s skippers in that cheese you’re eating!’

“‘Never mind, Tom,’ said he, as he kept on munching his cheese, ‘if they can stand it I can.’”

 

LINCOLN MISTAKEN FOR ONCE.

President Lincoln was compelled to acknowledge that he made at least one mistake in “sizing up” men. One day a very dignified man called at the White House, and Lincoln’s heart fell when his visitor approached. The latter was portly, his face was full of apparent anxiety, and Lincoln was willing to wager a year’s salary that he represented some Society for the Easy and Speedy Repression of Rebellions.

The caller talked fluently, but at no time did he give advice or suggest a way to put down the Confederacy. He was full of humor, told a clever story or two, and was entirely self-possessed.

At length the President inquired, “You are a clergyman, are you not, sir?”

“Not by a jug full,” returned the stranger heartily.

Grasping him by the hand Lincoln shook it until the visitor squirmed. “You must lunch with us. I am glad to see you. I was afraid you were a preacher.”

“I went to the Chicago Convention,” the caller said, “as a friend of Mr. Seward. I have watched you narrowly ever since your inauguration, and I called merely to pay my respects. What I want to say is this: I think you are doing everything for the good of the country that is in the power of man to do. You are on the right track. As one of your constituents I now say to you, do in future as you d–- please, and I will support you!”

This was spoken with tremendous effect.

“Why,” said Mr. Lincoln in great astonishment, “I took you to be a preacher. I thought you had come here to tell me how to take Richmond,” and he again grasped the hand of his strange visitor.

Accurate and penetrating as Mr. Lincoln’s judgment was concerning men, for once he had been wholly mistaken. The scene was comical in the extreme. The two men stood gazing at each other. A smile broke from the lips of the solemn wag and rippled over the wide expanse of his homely face like sunlight overspreading a continent, and Mr. Lincoln was convulsed with laughter.

He stayed to lunch.

 

FORGOT EVERYTHING HE KNEW.

President Lincoln, while entertaining a few friends, is said to have related the following anecdote of a man who knew too much:

During the administration of President Jackson there was a singular young gentleman employed in the Public Postoffice in Washington.

His name was G.; he was from Tennessee, the son of a widow, a neighbor of the President, on which account the old hero had a kind feeling for him, and always got him out of difficulties with some of the higher officials, to whom his singular interference was distasteful.

Among other things, it is said of him that while employed in the General Postoffice, on one occasion he had to copy a letter to Major H., a high official, in answer to an application made by an old gentleman in Virginia or Pennsylvania, for the establishment of a new postoffice.

The writer of the letter said the application could not be granted, in consequence of the applicant’s “proximity” to another office.

When the letter came into G.‘s hand to copy, being a great stickler for plainness, he altered “proximity” to “nearness to.”

Major H. observed it, and asked G. why he altered his letter.

“Why,” replied G., “because I don’t think the man would understand what you mean by proximity.”

“Well,” said Major H., “try him; put in the ‘proximity’ again.”

In a few days a letter was received from the applicant, in which he very indignantly said that his father had fought for liberty in the second war for independence, and he should like to have the name of the scoundrel who brought the charge of proximity or anything else wrong against him.

“There,” said G., “did I not say so?”

G. carried his improvements so far that Mr. Berry, the Postmaster-General, said to him: “I don’t want you any longer; you know too much.”

Poor G. went out, but his old friend got him another place.

This time G.‘s ideas underwent a change. He was one day very busy writing, when a stranger called in and asked him where the Patent Office was.

“I don’t know,” said G.

“Can you tell me where the Treasury Department is?” said the stranger.

“No,” said G.

“Nor the President’s house?”

“No.”

The stranger finally asked him if he knew where the Capitol was.

“No,” replied G.

“Do you live in Washington, sir.”

“Yes, sir,” said G.

“Good Lord! and don’t you know where the Patent Office, Treasury, President’s House and Capitol are?”

“Stranger,” said G., “I was turned out of the postoffice for knowing too much. I don’t mean to offend in that way again.

“I am paid for keeping this book.

“I believe I know that much; but if you find me knowing anything more you may take my head.”

“Good morning,” said the stranger.

 

HE LOVED A GOOD STORY.

Judge Breese, of the Supreme bench, one of the most distinguished of American jurists, and a man of great personal dignity, was about to open court at Springfield, when Lincoln called out in his hearty way: “Hold on, Breese! Don’t open court yet! Here’s Bob Blackwell just going to tell a story!” The judge passed on without replying, evidently regarding it as beneath the dignity of the Supreme Court to delay proceedings for the sake of a story.

 

HEELS RAN AWAY WITH THEM.

In an argument against the opposite political party at one time during a campaign, Lincoln said: “My opponent uses a figurative expression to the effect that ‘the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in the heart and head.’ The first branch of the figure—that is the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel—I admit is not merely figuratively but literally true. Who that looks but for a moment at their hundreds of officials scampering away with the public money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of running itch?

“It seems that this malady of their heels operates on the sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures very much as the cork leg in the comic song did on its owner, which, when he once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away.

“At the hazard of wearing this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote the situation calls to my mind, which seems to be too strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier, who was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied, ‘Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had, but somehow or other, whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it.’

“So with the opposite party—they take the public money into their hands for the most laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts can dictate; but before they can possibly get it out again, their rascally, vulnerable heels will run away with them.”

 

WANTED TO BURN HIM DOWN TO THE STUMP.

Preston King once introduced A. J. Bleeker to the President, and the latter, being an applicant for office, was about to hand Mr. Lincoln his vouchers, when he was asked to read them. Bleeker had not read very far when the President disconcerted him by the exclamation, “Stop a minute! You remind me exactly of the man who killed the dog; in fact, you are just like him.”

“In what respect?” asked Bleeker, not feeling he had received a compliment.

“Well,” replied the President, “this man had made up his mind to kill his dog, an ugly brute, and proceeded to knock out his brains with a club. He continued striking the dog after the latter was dead until a friend protested, exclaiming, ‘You needn’t strike him any more; the dog is dead; you killed him at the first blow.’

“‘Oh, yes,’ said he, ‘I know that; but I believe in punishment after death.’ So, I see, you do.”

Bleeker acknowledged it was possible to overdo a good thing, and then came back at the President with an anecdote of a good priest who converted an Indian from heathenism to Christianity; the only difficulty he had with him was to get him to pray for his enemies. “This Indian had been taught to overcome and destroy all his friends he didn’t like,” said Bleeker, “but the priest told him that while that might be the Indian method, it was not the doctrine of Christianity or the Bible. ‘Saint Paul distinctly says,’ the priest told him, ‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.’

“The Indian shook his head at this, but when the priest added, ‘For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head,’ Poor Lo was overcome with emotion, fell on his knees, and with outstretched hands and uplifted eyes invoked all sorts of blessings on the heads of all his enemies, supplicating for pleasant hunting-grounds, a large supply of squaws, lots of papooses, and all other Indian comforts.

“Finally the good priest interrupted him (as you did me, Mr. President), exclaiming, ‘Stop, my son! You have discharged your Christian duty, and have done more than enough.’

“‘Oh, no, father,’ replied the Indian; ‘let me pray! I want to burn him down to the stump!”

 

HAD A “KICK” COMING.

During the war, one of the Northern Governors, who was able, earnest and untiring in aiding the administration, but always complaining, sent dispatch after dispatch to the War Office, protesting against the methods used in raising troops. After reading all his papers, the President said, in a cheerful and reassuring tone to the Adjutant-General:

“Never mind, never mind; those dispatches don’t mean anything. Just go right ahead. The Governor is like a boy I once saw at a launching. When everything was ready, they picked out a boy and sent him under the ship to knock away the trigger and let her go.

“At the critical moment everything depended on the boy. He had to do the job well by a direct, vigorous blow, and then lie flat and keep still while the boat slid over him.

“The boy did everything right, but he yelled as if he were being murdered from the time he got under the keel until he got out. I thought the hide was all scraped off his back, but he wasn’t hurt at all.

“The master of the yard told me that this boy was always chosen for that job; that he did his work well; that he never had been hurt, but that he always squealed in that way.

“That’s just the way with Governor—. Make up your mind that he is not hurt, and that he is doing the work right, and pay no attention to his squealing. He only wants to make you understand how hard his task is, and that he is on hand performing it.”

 

THE CASE