"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 seances 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:

"This will never do! Secretary Cameron must take no such responsibility. This question belongs exclusively to me!"

* * * * *

"IF GOOD, HE'S GOT IT! IF T'AINT GOOD, HE AIN'T GOT IT!"

A revenue cutter conveyed a presidential party from Washington to Fortress Monroe, consisting of the chief, his secretaries of war and of the treasury, and General Egbert L. Viele—who preserved this tale. On the way Secretary Stanton stated that he had telegraphed to General Mitchell in Alabama "All right—go ahead!" though he did not know what emergency was thus to meet. He wished the executive to take the responsibility in case his ignorance erred.

"I will have to get you to countermand the order." So he hinted.

"Well," exclaimed the good-humored superior, "that is very much like a certain horse-sale in Kentucky when I was a boy (Lincoln was only eight when leaving Kentucky for Indiana). A particularly fine horse was to be sold, and the people gathered together. They had a small boy to ride the horse up and down while the spectators examined it for points. At last, one man whispered to the boy as he went by:

"'Look here, boy, ain't that hoss got the splints?'

"The boy replied: 'Master, I don't know what the splints is; but, if it is good for him, he has got it! If it ain't good for him, he ain't got it!' Now," finished the adviser, "if this was good for Mitchell, it was all right; but, if it was not, I have to countermand, eh?"—(Noted by General Viele.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN GUESSED THE FIRST TIME.

Postmaster-General James reflects a dialogue between Lincoln and one of his Cabinet officers, evincing how the iron hand in the velvet glove squeezed persons into his own mold.

"Mr. President"—Secretary Stanton speaking—"I cannot carry out that order! It is improper, and I don't believe it is right."

"Well, I reckon, Mr. Secretary"—very gently—"that you will hev to carry it out."

"But I won't do it—it's all wrong!"

"I guess you will hev to do it!"

He guessed right, the first time.

* * * * *

A PHANTOM CHASE.

Despite Chase's political enmity to him, President Lincoln said of Salmon Portland Chase: "I consider him one of the best, ablest, and most reliable men in the country." But he had to "let him slide" off upon the Supreme Court bench to have "knee-room" at the council-table. He explained: "He wants to be President, and, if he does not give that up, it will be a great injury to him and a great injury to me. He can never be President."—(Ex-Secretary Boutwell, the authority.)

* * * * *

THE WORD FLIES, BUT THE WRIT REMAINS.

Mr. Chase bemoaning that in leaving home he had in the hurry forgot to write a letter, Lincoln sagely consoled:

"Chase, never regret what you don't write—it is what you do write that you are often called upon to feel sorry for!"—(Heard by General Viele.)

* * * * *

THE WAR-LORD.

Lincoln states that the community among whom he was brought up would have hailed him as a wizard who spoke the dead tongues; and, granting his legal studies made him familiar with Latin as lawyers use it, he carefully avoided those hurdles of the classic orator, Latin quotations. Nevertheless, we have an exception to what would have pleased Lord Byron—the poet thought we have had enough of the classics. The President, spying Secretary Stanton, of the War Department, inadvertently striking an imposing attitude in the doorway of the telegraph-office in the Executive House, without knowing the President was here, at the desk, suddenly was aroused by hearing the jocose hail:

"Good evening, Mars!"—(Certified by Mr. A. B. Chandler, manager of the postal telegraph, War Department.)

* * * * *

FILE IT AWAY!

Stanton, as secretary of war, was bombarded with complaints and bickerings of the officers under him; they seemed to revel in annoying one famed for being of the irritable genus. Once he showed his principal a letter written in answer to a general who had abused him and accused him of favoritism. Lincoln listened with his quizzing air, and exclaimed rapturously:

"That's first-rate, Stanton! You've scored him well! Just right!"

As the pleased writer folded up the paper for its envelope, he quickly inquired:

"Why, what are you going to do with it now?"

It was to be despatched.

"No, no, that would spoil all. File it away! that is the kind of filing which keeps it sharp—and don't wound the other fellow! File it away."

* * * * *

"WHAT WE HAVE, WE WILL GIVE YOU."

It being rumored that the paper notes, "the greenbacks," should bear a motto as the coin had, "In God We Trust," it was suggested to quote from the apostles:

"Silver and gold we have not, but what we have we will give."

It was ascribed to Mr. Lincoln from his familiarity with the Scriptures and prevalent quoting from them.

* * * * *

MORE "SHINPLASTERS" TO HEAL THE SORE.

In 1863 President Lincoln went out to condole with the beaten Unionists, whom General Hooker had led fatally against Lee at Chancellorsville. Lincoln took his little son "Tad" with him. Amid the cheering one of the soldiers plainly voiced a terrible grievance—just when the sufferers were mostly in need of necessaries, the pay was behindhand. So one cried: "Send along more 'greenbacks,' Father Abraham!"

The boy was puzzled, but his companion explained that the soldiers wanted their money due. The hearer thought this over for a moment, and then pertly said: "Why don't 'Governor' Chase print some more?"

* * * * *

"THERE IS MUCH IN AN 'IF' AND A 'BUT.'"

Mr. Tinkler, telegraph-operator of the cipher telegrams at Washington, in the Executive residence, took the despatch announcing the nomination of Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, to the vice-presidency with Lincoln for the second term. The latter read it carefully, and thought aloud:

"Well, I thought possibly that he might be the man; but—"

He passed out of the office, leaving the hearer impressed. Indeed, it was a prophecy of the future—poor, inebriate Andy—not the Handy Andy, but the Merry Andrew of the fag-end of the lamentably sundered second term. Charles A. Dana, editing the New York Sun, printed this drop-line, and said it was a proof that Lincoln had no hand in his Vice being proposed or nominated.

* * * * *

DON'T WASTE THE PLUG, BUT USE IT!

Treasurer Chase conducted the financial course of the war on the principle of each day taking care of itself; but still he resisted plans for relief not of his own conception. So he threw cold water on the Walker suggestion that the currency should bear interest with a view that holders would hoard it. Walker's aid, Taylor, of Ohio, ran to the President for a higher hearing. But, though the President now espoused the scheme, the secretary still was counter on the ground that the Constitution was against it.

"Taylor," said Lincoln, with his frankness, which resembled impiety now, "go back and tell Chase not to bother about the Constitution—I have that sacred instrument here, and am guarding it with great care!" But a personal discussion with Chase was compulsory, during which the granite man stood on the Constitution.

"Chase," finally said the decisive factor, "this reminds me of a little sea yarn.

"A little coaster on the Mediterranean was in stress of storm. The Italian seamen have their own ideas of behavior under disaster, and fell on their knees to invoke the interposition of the usual stronghold—the Madonna—of which there was a statue in wood. But, many and genuine as were the invocations, all were unanswered. The gale continued, and more and more damage was done the upper works. Whereupon in a rage the skipper ordered the image to be hurled overboard. Strange to say, almost instanter the tempest lulled, and in a short time the bark rode steadily on the pacific waters. Come to examine the leak in the side, they found the wooden effigy thrown over, sucked into it, and so plugged up the cavity. The ship was saved by the castaway notion.

"Now, we are all aboard to save the ship, by any plug [Footnote: Plug, in Western speech: any substitute, worthless otherwise; an old horse; a leaden counter, a makeshift; the plug hat, however, comes from the shape—a cylinder of tobacco being so called.] that is offered, since prayers don't seem to do it. Let us try friend Amasa Walker's proposition."

* * * * *

THE RUNNING FEVER.

"There is a malady of vulnerable heels—a species of running fever—which operates on sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in the song did on its owner. When he had once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. A witty Irish soldier always boasting of his bravery when no danger was nigh, 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 me.'"—(Debate, Lincoln: Springfield, Illinois, December, 1839.)

* * * * *

"ONE AND A HALF TIMES BIGGER THAN OTHER MEN!"

Most conspicuous among the host of seeming friends consistently and constantly plotting against their chief to replace him if not actually displace him, was Salmon P. Chase. His whole career was that of the office-seeker incarnate. School-teacher, lawyer, governor of his State of adoption, Ohio—for he was a New Hampshire man—he tried from 1856 all parties to nominate him for the Presidency, at all openings. His inability to inspire trust forbade his having a personal following of any strength. Lincoln easily saw through him, but he had a fellow-feeling for an indubitably honest treasurer. To think of the countless opportunities he had to enrich himself out of the public coffers! Like another incorruptible statesman, he might have said: "I wonder at my qualms when I had but to stretch out my hand to pocket thousands!" But he truthfully said, when a hack impudently hinted that he could have the nomination dearest to his heart if he would but use to his private ends the vast patronage at his command:

"I should despise myself if capable of appointing or removing a man for the sake of the Presidency."

In February, 1861, the Peace Congress (Massachusetts) delegation called on the President to recommend Salmon P. Chase for the Treasury Department. Lincoln was already favorable, for he said:

"From what I know and hear, I think Mr. Chase is about a hundred and fifty to any other man's hundred for that place."

This is why Lincoln, when compelled to remove the underminer, solaced him with the bed to fall upon of the Supreme Court judgeship. He said of him: "Chase is about one and a half times bigger than any one I ever knew."

* * * * *

SO SLOW, A HEARSE RAN OVER HIM!

By treachery of those in charge of our navy-yards, arsenals, and treasury, the South began the bloody strife better provided than the simple North. But adverse fate seemed bent on keeping the disparity for long in favor of the weaker contestant. By one of those wicked dispensations tripping up our early march, the secretary of the navy was selected in Gideon Welles, an estimable gentleman in person, but wofully unsuited to the berth, if from age alone. Patriarchal in appearance, with a long face and longer beard, white and sere, it became proverbial without appearing much of a far-fetched joke that he was the naval constructor to Noah of Ark-aic fame. Unfortunately his "set" were antiques as well. Yet Lincoln clung to him—or he clung to the President like the Old Man of the Sea—under which aspect he was presented by the caricaturists. One day, however, said the gossips of the White House, Mr. Lincoln dropped the newspaper in reading, and exclaimed:

"Listen!" said he to his secretary, "a man has been run over by a hearse! As I saw Welles not so long ago, it must be one of Gideon's Band!"

A song entitled "Gideon's Band," introduced by the negro minstrels in New York, was popular on the streets and in the camps.

* * * * *

BLOOD-SHEDDING REMITS SINS.

Judge Kellogg, having an application for condoning a death sentence against a soldier, urged that he had served well hitherto, having been badly wounded under fire.

"Kellogg," remarked Lincoln quickly, "is there not something in the Bible about the shedding of blood for the remission of sins?"

As the judge was not familiar with ecclesiastical law, he merely bowed. In fact, the blood-offerings of the ancients was of animals, and it was deemed profane to offer one's own. Still, the offering of blood is dedication to a friend or the country. Lincoln had the idea correctly.

"That's a good point," he brightly said, "and there is no going behind it!"

So saying, he wrote the pardon, which Kellogg transmitted to the gladdened father of the culprit.

Mr. Lincoln had no need to go back to Scripture for his defense. It is martial law, unwritten but valid, that if a delinquent soldier, fugitive from justice, or breaking prison, reaches the battle-field and takes his place gallantly, no more would be said about the hanging charge, even though it were literally a hanging one.

* * * * *

HIS "LEG CASES."

The judge advocate-general, Holt, as well as the military chiefs, were in despair at their superior trifling with the laws of war by suspending mortal decrees, and, in short, in hunting up excuses for delaying the blow of justice. Once the judge brought to the President a case so flagrant that he did not doubt that, for a rarity, the chief would sign without any cavil and hesitation. A soldier had demoralized his regiment in the nick of a battle by dashing down his rifle and hiding behind a tree. He had not a friend or relative to sue for him. Despite all this, the Executive laid down the pen quivering between his long fingers, and said:

"Holt, I think I must, after all, file this away with my 'Leg Cases.'" And thrust the paper in one of a series of pigeonholes already crammed with the like.

The judge was taken off his guard by the inconsistent levity, and demanded the meaning of the term with acerbity.

"Holt, were you ever in battle?" he counter queried.

The man of law was a man of peace; he had seen lead, but in seals, not bullets.

Secretary of War Stanton was spurring the military justice on, as often before.

"Did Stanton ever march in the first line, to be shot at like this man?"

Holt answered for his colleague in the negative.

"Well, I tried it in the Black Hawk War!" proceeded the Illinoisian, "and I remember one time I grew awful weak in the legs when I heard the bullets whistle around me and saw the enemy in front of me. How my legs carried me forward I cannot now tell, for I thought every minute that I should sink to the ground. I am opposed to having soldiers shot for not facing danger when it is not known that their legs would carry them into danger! Well, judge, you see the papers crowded in there? You call them cases of 'Cowardice in the face of the enemy,' a long title, but I call them my 'Leg Cases,' for short!—and I put it to you, Holt, and leave it to you to decide for yourself, if Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help them running away with him?"

* * * * *

HOW THE DELINQUENT SOLDIER PAID HIS DEBT.

There is a great similarity in the many stories of Lincoln's leniency to soldiers incurring the death-penalty according to the code of war, and no wonder, when they were so numerous that he often had four-and-twenty sentences to sign or ignore in a day.

A member of a Vermont regiment was so sentenced for sleeping at his post. The more than usual intercession made for him induced Lincoln to visit the culprit in his cell. He found him a simple country lad, impressing him as a reminder of himself at that age. In the like plain and rustic vein he discoursed with him.

"I have been put to a deal of bother on your account, Scott," he said paternally. "What I want to know is how are you going to pay my bill?"

From a lawyer turned sword of the State, this was reasonable enough; so the young man responded:

"I hope I am as grateful to you, Mr. Lincoln, as any man can be for his life. But this came so sudden that I did not lay out for it. But I have my bounty-money in the savings-bank, and I guess we could raise some money by a mortgage on the farm; and, if we wait till pay-day for the regiment, I guess the boys will help some, and we can make it up—if it isn't more nor five or six hundred, eh?"

With the same gravity, the intermediator reckoned the cost would be more.

"My son," said he, "the bill is a large one. Your friends cannot pay it—nor your comrades, nor the farm, nor the pay! If from this day William Scott does his duty so that, if I were there when he came to die, he could look me in the face as now and say: 'I have kept my promise and have done my duty as a soldier,' then my debt will be paid."

The boy made the promise, and was immediately restored to the regiment. He earned promotion, but refused it. At Lee's Mills, on the Warwick River, he was wounded while distinguishing himself in a grand assault. Mortally wounded in saving three lives, he was enabled with his dying breath to send a message to the President to the effect that he had redeemed his pledge. On his breast was found one of the likenesses of Lincoln with the motto, "God bless our President!" which the Grand Army men were given. He thanked the benefactor for having let him fall like a soldier, in battle, and not like a coward, by his comrades' rifles.

* * * * *

"THE SWEARING HAD TO BE DONE THEN, OR NOT AT ALL!"

An old man came from Tennessee to beg the life of his son, death-doomed under the military code. General Fiske procured him admittance to the President, who took the petition and promised to attend to the matter. But the applicant, in anguish, insisted that a life was at stake—that to-morrow would not do, and that the decision must be made on the instant.

Lincoln assumed his mollifying air, and in a soothing tone brought out his universal soothing-sirup, the little story:

"It was General Fiske, who introduced you, who told me this. The general began his career as a colonel, and raised his regiment in Missouri. Having good principles, he made the boys promise then not to be profane, but let him do all the swearing for the regiment. For months no violation of the agreement was reported. But one day a teamster, with the foul tongue associated with their calling and mule-driving, as he drove his team through a longer and deeper series of mud-puddles than ever before, unable to restrain himself, turned himself inside out as a vocal Vesuvius. It happened, too, that this torrent was heard surging by the colonel, who called him to account.

"'Well, yes, colonel,' he acknowledged, 'I did vow to let you do all the swearing of the regiment; but the cold fact is, that the swearing had to be done thar and then, or not at all, to do the 'casion justice—and you were not thar!'

"Now," summed up Mr. Lincoln to the engrossed and semiconsoled parent, "I may not be there, so do you take this and do the swearing him off!"

He furnished him with the release autograph, and sent another mourner on his way rejoicing.

* * * * *

DISPLACE THE THISTLES BY FLOWERS.

Two ladies called upon the President at the end of 1864, one the wife, the other the mother of western Pennsylvanians imprisoned for resisting the military draft. A number of other men were fellows in their durance on precisely the same grounds. Finding it meet to grant this dual relief sought, Lincoln directed the whole to be liberated, and signed the paper with one signature to cover the entire act of humanity. His old friend, Speed, was witness of this scene, and, knowing only too well the sensitive nature of the President, he spoke his wonder that such ordeals were not killing.

Lincoln mused, and agreed that such scenes were not to be wantonly undergone.

"But they do not hurt me. That is the only thing today to make me forget my condition, or give me any pleasure"—he was unwell, then; his feet and hands were always cold, and often when about he ought to have been abed. "I have in that order made two persons happy, and alleviated the distress of many a poor soul whom I never expect to see. It is more than one can often say that, in doing right, one has made two happy in one day. Speed, die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow."—(Vouched for by Joshua R. Speed, the first to be friend to Lincoln when he set out to become a lawyer, at Springfield, in 1837.)

* * * * *

"YOU HAVE ONE, AND I HAVE ONE—THAT IS RIGHT!"

An elderly woman was among the suitors of the President, when the commander-in-chief by virtue of office was besought to release her eldest son of three, her husband and two younger sons having been slain in action.

"Certainly," returned the chief, "if you have given us all, and your prop has been taken away, you are justly entitled to one of your boys."

The woman took the discharge, and gratefully went away. But she was compelled to return more grieved than before, as she had found the son she sought dying in a hospital at the front. The surgeon made a note of the fatality, with which, unable to speak, she presented herself to the President. He knew what she wished this time, and proceeded to write out the release of the second son. On handing her the paper, he said—a new judgment of a kinder judge than Solomon:

"Now, you have one, and I the other of the two left; that is no more than right!"

* * * * *

"SHOOTING A MAN DOES HIM NO GOOD!"

Judge Kellogg, of New York, begged off the son of a voter in his district, condemned for military infraction; in fact, the judge did not know much of the case, but his insistence prevailed over the rectifier of the law and articles of war. Lincoln dryly remarked, as he appended his signature to the pardon:

"I do not believe that shooting a man does him any good!"

* * * * *

BENEVOLENCE IS BEAUTIFUL.

Thaddeus Stevens accompanied a lady of his constituents to beg a pardon of the President, her son being under death sentence of a court-martial. The senator backing up the petition, it was granted. The grateful woman was choking, and was led away by her escort, without speaking in thankfulness. But at the exit she found her voice, and burst forth feelingly:

"Mr. Stevens, they told me that the President was homely looking! It is a lie! He is the handsomest man I ever saw!"

* * * * *

"IT WAS THE BABY THAT DID IT."

A young mother came to Washington to sue for the life of her husband, a deserter, condemned to die. Such was the crowd of besiegers for grace, offices, and simple greeting by the host of the White House that she was kept out in the hall. But one day, the master passing through the corridor "to hold the show," heard a baby's pitiful wail. He halted, listened again to make sure, and on entering his reception-parlor asked his favorite usher if he had not heard that odd thing—there—an infant's cry.

The attendant promptly related that a woman with a babe was without, who had been losing her time three days.

"Go at once, and send her to me," he ordered, expressing regret that she should have been overlooked.

As there were several extenuating points in her plea, or the benign official leaned that way, he wrote his pardon and gave it to the woman, whose still plaintive smile shone through tears of gratitude.

"Take that, my poor woman, and it will bring you back your husband," he said, going so far as to direct her to what authority to apply for the action.

In showing her forth, the old usher, who knew his employer's tender heart where children were concerned, whispered:

"It was the baby that did it!"—(Told by "Old Dan'el," the good-natured Irish usher.)

* * * * *

"IT RESTS ME TO SAVE A LIFE!"

Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the House, pleaded with Lincoln for the life of an elector's son, sentenced to be shot. Though he intruded on the arbiter very late after a long spell of official duties, Lincoln accorded the boon.

"Colfax," explained he, "it makes me rested after a hard day's work, if I can find some good excuse for saving a man's life, and I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him, and his family, and his friends."

* * * * *

"A FAMILY MAN WANTS TO SEE HIS FAMILY."

Superintendent Tinker, of the Western Union Telegraph Company, vouches for the following:

A woman came to the Honorable Francis Kernan, member of Congress, with a pitiful tale, with which he went to the President. Her husband was a soldier who had been away from home a year. He deserted in order to have a glance at the family, and was captured on his way back to the front. But the rules of war are imperative, and without compassion. The President was interested, as in all such cases where a deserving life and a sorrowing woman were at stake. He said:

"Of course, this man wanted to see his family! They ought not to shoot him for that!" He telegraphed for action in the matter to cease, and finally pardoned the deserter.

"A fellow-feeling"—for all his thoughts reverted to his family life at Springfield.

* * * * *

A RULE WITHOUT EXCEPTION.

Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation, issued in December, 1863, exemplifies the perpetual attempt to infuse mercy into that intestine warfare, which always grows more fierce by oil thrown on the flames, and only once, in our case, terminated in the brothers becoming brothers again. He replied thus to a public criticizer of the document:

"When a man is sincerely penitent for his misdeeds, and gives satisfactory evidence of the same, he can safely be pardoned, and there is no exception to the rule."

* * * * *

EVEN REBELS MIGHT BE SAVED.

A Mr. Shrigley, of Philadelphia, having been appointed hospital chaplain, the President sent in his name to the Senate, and his confirmation was imminent. A deputation came on to protest on the grounds that he was a Universalist, a large-minded man, who did not believe in endless punishment. Logically, he believed that "even the rebels will be saved," concluded the opposition, horrified.

"Well, gentlemen," determined the President gravely, "if that be so, and there is any way under heaven whereby the rebels can be saved, then, for God's sake and for their sakes, let the man be appointed."

* * * * *

WHIPPING AROUND THE STUMP.

On New-year's morning, 1864, President Lincoln entered the War Department building. His sensitive nature, more than ever strained to the utmost tension, was irritated by hearing a woman wailing over a child in her arms at an office door. Major Eckert requested to ascertain the cause of the grief brought back the painful but not unexampled explanation. A soldier's wife had come to Washington with her babe, expecting to have no difficulty in going on under pass to the camp where her husband was under the colors. But she learned, to her dismay, that, while an officer's wife has few obstacles to meet in communing with her husband under like circumstances, the private's is dissimilarly situated. This poor soul, with little money anyway, was perplexed how to wait in the expensive city till her wish was granted.

"Come, Eckert," blurted out the chief in his frank manner, "let's send the woman down there!"

It was recited that the war office had strengthened the orders against women in camp.

"H'm!" coughed the other in his dry way, ominous of an alternative, "let us whip the devil around the stump since he will not step right over! Send the woman's husband leave of absence to report here—to see his wife and baby!"

So the officer on duty wrote the order, and the couple were happily reunited.—(By A. B. Chandler, manager of postal telegraphs, attached to the War Department in the war.)

* * * * *

"LIFE TOO PRECIOUS TO BE LOST."

Benjamin Owen, a young Vermont volunteer, was sentenced to the extremity for being asleep on post. Lincoln was especially lenient in these cases, as he held that a farm-boy, used to going to bed early, was apt to maintain the habit in later life. It came out that the youth had taken the place of a comrade the night before, as extra duty, and this overwork had fatigued him so that his succumbing was at least explicable. This clue being in a letter he wrote home, his sister journeyed to the capital with it and showed it to the President.

"Oh, that fatal sleep!" he exclaimed, "thousands of lives might have been lost through that fatal sleep!"

He wrote out the pardon, and said to the girl:

"Go home, my child, and tell that father of yours, who could approve his country's sentence, even when it took the life of a youth like that, that Abraham Lincoln thinks the life too precious to be lost."

He went in his carriage to deliver the pardon to the proper authorities for its execution—and not the soldier's. Then, making out a furlough for the released volunteer, he saw him and the sister off on the homeward journey, pinning a badge on the former's arm with the words:

"The shoulder which should bear a comrade's burden, and die for it so uncomplainingly, must wear that strap!"

* * * * *

MERCY HAS PRECEDENCE OVER THE RIGID.

On the 9th of April, 1865, Lee accepted Grant's easy conditions, and practically everything was completed but the formal signing of the capitulation. The wide rejoicing covered the earth, the eye-witnesses may say, with one smile of relief and gladness. Washington looked gay with bunting, like New York City on the day of "Show your flag!" Above all, the President, whose words at Springfield, in 1860, to the Illinois school superintendent, Newton Bateman, were justified: "I may not see the end, but it will come, and I shall be vindicated (in condemning slavery)."

It was, therefore, in a receptive mood that he was found by Senator J. B. Henderson, of Missouri. This gentleman came for the third time on an errand of pity.

At the close of the war, one Colonel Green, brother to United States Senator James S. Green, crossed into Mississippi with his friend and brother in arms, George E. Vaughan. He gave Vaughan letters for home and started him to carry news to his family. Captured within the Federal lines, he was held as a spy. Mr. Henderson succeeded in getting a retrial, and even a third hearing, but still the man was under sentence of death. On the afternoon of April 14, he called at the White House, and insisted that the pardon should be granted now if ever, "in the interest of peace and consideration."

The gladsome chief agreed with him, and directed him to go to Secretary Stanton and have the prisoner released. But the inflexible official, on whom the general glee had no softening, refused, and the man had but two days to live. When the intermediary hurried back to the Executive Mansion, the President was dressed to go to Ford's Theater, with his wife, his son, and a young couple of friends.

Nevertheless, he stopped, went into the study, and wrote an unconditional release and pardon for Vaughan, saying:

"I think this will have precedence over Stanton!"

It was his last official act—one of mercy and forgiveness.

* * * * *

TAKEN FROM REBELLION AND GIVEN TO LOYALTY.

A lady out of Tennessee, which was early to join secession, came to Washington in search of her son, a youth enlisted in the Confederate Army. She found him in the Fort Henry hospital, where, allowed to see him, as she was loyal, in spite of regulations about prisoners of war, she learned that he would recover. She induced him to recant and offer his parole if he were allowed freedom. She called on Secretary Stanton, but he was in one of his boorish moods—was he ever out of them?—and repulsed her with rudeness. She finally appealed to the President, who seemed very often balm to Stanton, "a fretful corrosive applied to a deathly wound," and he gave her an order to receive the young man if he swore off his pledge to the wrong side.

"To take the young man from the ranks of the rebellion," he said to her, "and give him to a loyal mother is a better investment to this government than to give him up to its deadly enemies."

The young man was enabled to resume his studies, but in a Northern college!

* * * * *

SUSPENSION IS NOT EXECUTION.

Among those generals—amateurs, like the President, themselves—who disapproved of any leniency in discipline, was Major-general Benjamin F. Butler. He wrote to his commander-in-chief so impudent an epistle as the annexed:

"MR. PRESIDENT: I pray you not to interfere with the court-martial of this army. (His, of course—his skill was discoursed upon by General Grant, who said that Butler had "corked himself up.") You will destroy all discipline among the soldiers."

But in the teeth of this embargo, moved by the entreaties of an old father whose son was under death sentence by this despot, he said:

"Butler or no Butler, here goes!" and, seizing his pen, wrote that the soldier in prison was not to be shot until further orders.

The affected parent eagerly took the precious paper, but his jaw fell on seeing the text: he had looked for a full pardon. But the comforter hastened to explain:

"Well, my old friend, I see that you are not very well acquainted with me. If your son never looks upon death till further orders from me to shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older than Methuselah."

* * * * *

"THE DISCONTENTED ... ABOUT FOUR HUNDRED—"

In 1856, Mr. Lincoln had figured prominently in the Fremont-Dayton presidential campaign, and ever since he had been partial to the "Pathfinder," though he clearly saw that he would be a rival for the chair at Washington—his long-cherished ambition. He gave, at the outset of the war, the most important military command, that of the Mountain, or Western Department, to Fremont. The latter attempted to "steal his thunder" by issuing a forerunner of the Emancipation Act, and was removed; but Lincoln reinstated him till he had to repeat the removal. He was repaid by the incorrigible marplot setting up as candidate for the chief magistracy after it was settled that the retiring officer should be reelected. Nevertheless, the competitor's party was so small that, in allusion to it, Lincoln read from "Samuel," Book I:

"And every one who was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one who was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became captain over them, and there were with him about four hundred men!"

* * * * *

"NOT MUCH OF A HEAD, BUT HIS ONLY ONE!"

Although the life of a soldier sleeping on post was at stake, the pleader wished to forbear on finding that the supreme decider, the President, meant to make a personal matter of it. He suspended the execution while looking into it. But it was objected that this was a burden not intended to impose.

"Never mind," Lincoln answered. "This soldier's life is as valuable to him as any person's in the land. It reminds me of the old Scotch woman's saying about her laird going to be beheaded for participation in a Jacobite rebellion:

"'It waur na mickle of a head, but it is the only head the puir body ha' got.'"—(Assured, in substance, by L. E. Chittenden.)

* * * * *

"GI'E US A GOOD CONCEIT!"

A place-hunter hastened to his old acquaintance, Lincoln, when he was seated, of course, to secure a trough. But he aimed high—in contrast to Lincoln's adage that a novice should aim low! The least he named was the berth of master of the mint.