Chapter III: Part 3

"As you voted for me," went on the ambitious man about to exchange the counter for the rostrum, "you must want me to make a decent appearance in the state-house?"

"Certainly," was the reply, as anticipated, Lincoln was so sure of his wheedling ways by this time.

And the friend in need supplied him with two hundred dollars currency, which, according to the budding legislator's promise, he returned out of his first pay as representative.

* * * * *

THE ABUTMENT WAS DUBERSOME.

President Lincoln was told that the Northern and Southern Democrats had at last accomplished a fusion.

"Well, I believe you, of course," said he to the informant, "but I have my doubts of the foundation, like my friend Brown. Brown is a sound church member. He was member, too, of a township committee, having to receive bids for building a bridge over a deep and rapid river. The contractors did not seem to like the proposition, so Brown called in an architectural acquaintance, named--we will say, Jones. At the question 'Can you build this bridge?' he was overbold, and replied: 'Yes, sir, or any other. I could build a bridge from Sodom to Gomorrah with abutment below.' The committee being good and select men were shocked at the strong language, and Brown was called upon to defend his protégé.

"'I know Jones well enough,' he rejoined, 'and he is so honest a man and good a builder, that if he states positively that he can build a bridge from Sodom to Gomorrah, why, I believe him! But--I feel bound to state that I am in some doubt as to the abutment on the other side!'

"My friend, I reassert I have my doubts about the abutment!"

* * * * *

"GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE PRESIDENT."

It was while at the store in New Salem that Lincoln made the acquaintance of Richard Yates, contemporarily in office with him as war governor of Illinois. So proud were the citizens of the colloquial abilities of their rising young man that they used to show him to visitors as their lion. Yates was introduced and stayed to hear him roar. Later, Lincoln asked him to join him in his noon meal at the cabin where a woman boarded him. The latter was one of those good souls who give the best in the larder, but are all the time apologizing. They had happened upon the ordinarily plain repast of bread--home-made, and of the sweetest corn--and milk from the cow. Flurried by the unknown company, the auntie, in dealing out the bowls to a numerous family, somehow, between herself and Lincoln, let the vessel slip, and, falling to the floor, it was smashed and the milk wasted. Lincoln disputed it was her fault, as she politely averred. She continued to argue for her guiltiness.

"Oh, very well," said Lincoln, at last, "we will not wrangle on whose was the slip, or if it does not trouble you it will not trouble _me_. Anyway, what is a basin of pap?--nothing to fret about!"

"Mr. Lincoln, you are wrong"--the woman remembered the children to whom a lesson ought to be given--"a dish of bread and milk is fit for the President of these United States."

Both the guests acquiesced. The cream of a story is in the application. Years afterward, when the man from Sangamon, the unknown, occupied the curule chair, an elderly woman from Illinois called at the White House and requested an interview. It was the Aunt Lizzie of the above episode. Her mere mention of being "home folks" won her admittance, and her recognition the best of the Executive Mansion lard-pantry. When she had finished the elegant collation, and intermingled the tasty morsels with reminiscences, the host slyly inquired if now in the Presidential dwelling she stuck to the sentiments about the diet enunciated in her log cabin.

"Indeedy, I do! I still stick to it that bread and milk is a good enough dish for the President."

Lincoln smiled with his sad smile. He had been long--not to say a lengthy--martyr to dyspepsia, and she uttered a truism that struck him to the--the digestive apparatus!

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S FIRST POLITICAL SPEECH.

In 1831, or '32, Abraham Lincoln made his maiden political speech at Pappsville (or Richland), Illinois. He was twenty-three, and timid, and the preceding speakers had "rolled the sun nearly down." The speech is, therefore, short and agreeable:

"Gentlemen, fellow citizens: I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the legislature. My politics are short and sweet--like an old woman's dance! I am in favor of a national bank, the international improvement scheme, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I will be thankful. If defeated, it will be all the same!"--(Springfield _Republican_.)

* * * * *

A LIGHTNING-ROD TO PROTECT A GUILTY CONSCIENCE!

One term in the Illinois State legislature only whetted the predestined politician for a seat again at that table, though it was not he who won the loaves and the fishes. He was to speak at Springfield, the more gloriously welcomed as he was prominent in the movement hereafter realized, of changing the capital from Vandalia to this more energetic town.

The meeting had foreboded ill, as a serious wrangle between two of the preceding speakers threatened to end in a challenge to a duel, still a fashionable diversion. But Lincoln intervened with a speech so enthralling that the hearers forgot the dispute and heard him out with rapture. He had found the proper way to manage his voice, never musical, by controlling the nasal twang into a monotonous but audible sharpness, "carrying" to a great distance. He was followed by one George Forquer (Farquhar or Forquier), a facing-both-ways, profit-taking politician, who had achieved his end by obtaining an office. This was the land-office register at this town. He had been a prominent Whig representative in 1834. The turncoat assailed Lincoln bitterly (much as Pitt was derided in his beginning) and had begun his piece by announcing that "the young man (Lincoln) must be taken down." As if to live up to the lucrative berth, Mr. Forquer had finished a frame-house--Springfield still had log houses, and not only in the environs, either!--and to cap the novelty, had that other new feature, a lightning-rod, put upon it. The object of the slur at youth had listened to the diatribe, flattering only so far as he was singled out.

Mr. Joshua F. Speed, a bosom friend of Lincoln, reports the retort as follows:

"The gentleman says that 'this young man must be taken down.' It is for you, not for me, to say whether I am up or down. The gentleman has alluded to my being a young man; I am older in years than in the tricks and trades of politicians.

"I desire to live, and I desire place and distinction as a politician; but I would rather die now than, like the gentleman, live to see the day that I would have to erect a lightning-rod to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God!"

Mr. Speed says that the reply was characterized by great force and dignity. The happy image of the lightning-rod for a conscience has passed into the fixed-star stage of a household word throughout the West.

* * * * *

FIRING ON A FLEA FOR A SQUIRREL.

In 1841, while serving a term in the Illinois legislature, Lincoln was the longest of the Sangamon representatives, distinguished as the Long Nine. They were much hampered by an old member who tried to put a stopper upon any measure on the set ground that it was "un-con-sti-tu-tional." Lincoln was selected to "spike his gun." A measure was introduced benefiting the Sangamon district, so that its electee might befittingly push it, and defend it. He was warrantably its usher when the habitual interrupter bawled his stereotyped:

"Unconstitutional!"

The "quasher" is reported as follows in the local press, if not in the journal of the House, which one need not, perhaps, consult:

"Mr. Speaker," said the son of the Sangamon Vale, "the attack of the member from Wabash County upon the un-con-sti-tu-tion-al-i-ty of this measure reminds me of an old friend of mine.

"He k a peculiar-looking old fellow, with shaggy, overhanging eyebrows, and a pair of spectacles under them. (This description fitted the Wabash member, at whom all gaze was directed.)

"One morning just after the old soul got up, he imagined he saw a gray squirrel on a tree near his house. So he took down his rifle, and fired at the squirrel, as he believed, but the squirrel paid no attention to the shot. He loaded and fired again and again, until, at the thirteenth shot, he set down his gun impatiently, and said to his boy, looking on:

"'Boy, there's something wrong about this rifle.'

"'Rifle's all right--I know it is,' answered the boy; 'but where's your squirrel?'

"'Don't you see him, humped up about half-way up the tree?' inquired the old man, peering over his spectacles and getting mystified.

"'No, I don't,' responded the boy; and then turning and looking into his father's face, he exclaimed: 'Yes, I spy your squirrel! You have been firing at a flea on your own brow!'"

This modern version of seeing the mote and not the beam in one's own eye smothered the member for Wabash in laughter, and he _dropped_ the standard objection of "unconstitutional" as he had not his mark.

* * * * *

THE CREAM OF THE JOKE.

By reason of the distances and the lonesomeness, it was the pleasant habit of candidates to make their electioneering tours together. In seeking reelection in 1838, Lincoln was accompanied by Mr. Ewing. They stopped at one country house about dark, when the good wife was going a-milking, while her husband was still a-field. Intent on securing her, as she had the repute of being "the gray mare," the two partizans accompanied her to the paddock. Ewing, to show his gallantry as well as his familiarity with farm work--a main point in such communities--offered to relieve the dame of the pail and fill it, while she rested. In the meantime, Lincoln chatted with her, so that Ewing could hardly get a word in. At his finishing his self-chosen task, he beheld the pair deeply absorbed, for Lincoln had exercised his glib tongue to such advantage as to secure her influence over her man's vote.

* * * * *

PARALLEL COURSES.

In the thirteenth Congress, Jefferson Davis was in the Senate, while Lincoln and Alexander Stephens were in the House.

* * * * *

JUMPING JIM CROW!

When in Congress, he was a conscience Whig, as opposed to the cotton ones--that is, for the anti-slavery doctrine and not "cottoning" for the South. He wrote home:

"As you (at Springfield) are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do so before long." He nearly ex-tinguished himself, for suddenly he went right about face--according to the popular song--quite a political if not a politic course:

You wheel about and jump about, and do just so!
And ebery time you jump about, you jump Jim Crow!

He had gone against the general tide in hindering the Mexican War as sure to bring Texas into the Union as a slave State, yet now he espoused its hero, "Rough and Ready" Taylor. He had to excuse himself as recognizing that the general was the Whigs' best candidate, and as the Whig National Convention agreed with him, the apparent truckling was condoned.

* * * * *

FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS.

"Your letter on McClellan reminds me of a story that I (A. Lincoln) heard in Washington, when I was here before. There was an editor in Rhode Island noted for his love of fun--it came to him irresistibly--and he could not help saying just what came to his mind. He was appointed postmaster by Tyler. Some time after Tyler vetoed the Bank Bill, and came into disrepute with the Whigs, a conundrum went the round of the papers. It was as follows: 'Why is John Tyler like an ass?' This editor copied the conundrum and could not resist the temptation to answer it, which he did thus: 'Because he _is_ an ass!' This piece of fun cost him his head--but it was a fact!"--(_Chatauque Democrat_.)

* * * * *

THE PARTY GAD.

"In 1846, General Cass was for the (Wilmot) Proviso [Footnote: Wilmot Proviso: that money to buy Mexican land should not go toward slave-buying.] at once; in March, 1846, he was still for it, but not just then; and in December, 1847, he was against it altogether. When the question was raised in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take ground for it. He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the uninteresting position of a mere follower; but soon he began to see a glimpse of the great Democratic ox-gad waving in his face, and to hear indistinctly a voice saying:

"'Back, back, sir; back a little!'

"He shakes his head and bats his eyes, and blunders back to his position of March, 1847; and still the gad waves and the voice grows more distinct and sharper still:

"'Back, sir! back, I say! farther back!' And back he goes to the position of December, 1847, at which the gad is still, and the voice soothingly says:

"'So! stand still at that!'"--(Speech by A. Lincoln, House of Representatives, Washington, July 27, 1848.)

* * * * *

HARD TO BEAT!

Of his Washington experience in 1848, Lincoln brought a pack of tales about the statesmen then prominent. He declared to have heard of Daniel Webster the subjoined:

In school little Dan had been guilty of some misdoing for which he was called up to the teacher to be caned on the hand. His hands were dirty, and to save appearance he moistened his right hand, on his way up, and wiped it on his pants. Nevertheless, it looked so foul on presentation to the ferule that the teacher sharply protested:

"Well, this is hard to beat! If you will find another hand in this room as filthy, I will let you off!"

Daniel popped out his left hand, modestly kept in the background, and readily cried:

"Here it is, sir!"

(Told by Lincoln before "the Honorable Mr. Odell, and others." This is not the ex-governor, Mr. Odell, of New York, who pleads guilty to the editor of "being too young to have the honor of speaking with Mr. Lincoln." The worse luck--both would have profited by the mutual pleasure.)

* * * * *

"I RECKON I TOOK MORE THAN MY SHARE."

Lincoln confessed at the outset of life that he was going to avoid society, as its frequentation was incompatible with study. He avowed at the same time that he liked it, which enhanced the sacrifice. No doubt so, since his Washington sojourn and his legal and legislative company earned him the title of the prince of good fellows. To be coupled with the genial Martin van Buren with the same epithet was, indeed, a compliment.

At Washington he had, in 1848, made acquaintance with the fashionable world. He preferred the livelier and less strait ways of the Congressional boarding-house table, the Saturday parties at Daniel Webster's, and the motley crowd at the bowling-alley, as well as the chatterers' corner in the Congressional post-office. Still, as chairman of a committee, and by reason of his being a wonder from the hirsute West, he was invited to the receptions and feasts of the first families. Green to the niceties of the table, he committed errors--so frankly apologized for and humorously treated that he lost no standing.

At one dinner the experience was new to him of the dish of currant jelly being passed around for each guest to transfer a little to his plate. So he took it as a sweet, oddly accompanying the venison, and left but little on the general plate. But after tasting it, he perceived that the compote-dish was going the rounds, and suddenly looking pointedly at his plate and then at the hostess, with a troubled air, he said, with convincing simplicity:

"It looks as though I took more than my share."--(Supplied by the hostess, and collected by J. R. Speed.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN WAS LOADED FOR BEAR.

An eminent man of politics has said that the similes of the learned which liken Abraham Lincoln to King Henry IV. of France and other historical notables are far from the mark and reveal their miscomprehension of the Machiavel redeemed by moral goodness. He thinks that without the hypocrisy being censurable he was more of the type of Pope Sixtus the Fifth. This celebrity, who, like Lincoln, was in the hog business at one time, pretended silliness to be elected pontiff. The die cast, he stood forth in all his native strength, keeping the friends who did not try to sway him, and becoming a rod of steel where he had been rated as lead. [Footnote: Greeley stamped Lincoln as "the slowest piece of lead that ever crawled."] At the same time as he dispraised himself--mocked and laughed--he let out glimpses of true ambition. When his short-sighted advisers warmly crossed his ground of setting himself with freedom against the pro-slavery party, assuring him that he would thereby lose the senatorship as against Douglas, he confessed:

"I am after larger game. The battle of 1860 (for the chair of Washington) is worth a hundred of this."

* * * * *

"A BOUNTEOUS PRESIDENT--IF ANYTHING IS LEFT!"

"Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the animal standing in doubt between two stacks of hay and starving to death; the like of that would never happen to General Cass. Place the stacks a thousand miles apart; he would stand stock-still, midway between them, and eat both at once; and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some, too, at the same time. By all means, make him President, gentlemen. He will feed you bounteously--if--if--there is anything left after he shall have helped himself."--(Speech, House of Representatives, July 27, 1848.)

* * * * *

THE ART OF BEING PAID TO EAT.

"I have introduced General Cass' accounts here chiefly to show the wonderful physical capacities of the man. They show that he not only did the labor of several men at the same time, but that he often did it at several places many hundred miles apart, at the same time! And at eating, too, his capacities are shown to be quite as wonderful. From October, 1821, to May, 1822, he ate ten rations a day in Michigan, ten a day here in Washington, and near five dollars' worth a day besides, partly on the road between the two places. And then there is an important discovery in his example: 'The art of being paid for what one eats, instead of having to pay for it.' Hereafter, if any nice man shall owe a bill which he cannot pay, he can just board it out!"--(Speech, House of Representatives, July 27, 1848.)

(A tilt at a general drawing rations for himself and staff.)

* * * * *

A VICE NOT TO SAY "NO!"

Mr. Lincoln said to General Viele: "If I have got one vice, it is not being able to say 'No.' And I consider it a vice. Thank God for not making me a woman! I presume if He had, He would have made me just as homely as I am, and nobody would have ever tempted me!"

* * * * *

THE BEST CAR!

From his previous sojourn in the capital, President Lincoln had a fund of good stories upon his predecessors. Among them was the following tale about President Tyler, one of the weakest chiefs the republic has ever known, with the exception of Franklin Pierce. Lincoln said that this President's son "Bob" was sent by his father to arrange about a special train for an excursion. The railroad agent happened to be a hard-shell Whig, and having no fear of the great, and wanting no favor, shrank from allowing him any. He said that the road did not run any "specials" for Presidents.

"Stop!" interrupted Bob, "did you not furnish a special for General-President Harrison?" (Died 1841.)

"S'pose we did," answered the superintendent; "well, if you will bring your father here in that condition, you shall have the best train on the track!"

* * * * *

SELF-MADE.

"Self-made or never made," says one of the apologists for Lincoln's ruggedness of character and outward air; at an early political meeting, when asked if he were self-made and he answered in the affirmative, the rough critic remarked: "Then it is a poor job," as if it were by nature's apprentice. But in 1860, when friends reproached him for the lack of "Old Hickory" Jackson's sternness, he replied nobly:

"I am just as God made me, and cannot change."

* * * * *

HIS HIGH MIGHTINESS.

The little "court" of the White House wrangling about a fit title for the Chief, that of "excellency" not being taken as sufficient, one disputant suggested that the Dutch one of "high mightiness" might fit. Speaker Mullenberg, at the first Presidency, pronounced on the question at a dinner where Washington was sitting.

"Why, general, if we were certain the office would always be held by men as large as yourself (how cleverly he shunned the use of either "great" or "grand!") or Mr. Wynkopp there, it would be appropriate enough! But, if by chance a President as small as my opposite neighbor should be elected, his high mightiness would be ridiculous!"

The quarrelers were hushed, thinking if Douglas, the Little Giant, had preceded or should follow their colossus of six feet three!

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S OPINION AT THIRTY.

Diffident, but having been twice disappointed in love-making, Abraham wrote in support of a Miss Owen rejecting him: "I should never be satisfied with any one blockhead enough to have me."

* * * * *

THE BLANK BIOGRAPHY.

Lincoln had been reading from Edmund Burke's life, when he threw down the book with disrelish. He fell into his habit of musing, and on reviving, said to his associate, Herndon:

"I've wondered why book publishers do not have blank biographies on their shelves, always ready for an emergency; so that if a man happens to die, his heirs or his friends, if they wish to perpetuate his memory, can purchase one already written--but with blanks. These blanks _they_ can fill up with rosy sentences full of high-sounding praise."

He sent the "Dictionary of Congress" his autobiography in a single paragraph of fifty words--as an example(?).

* * * * *

"THE HOMELIEST MAN UNDER GOVERNMENT."

When General Lee surrendered to General Grant, one point was noticed by the spectators which, it was held, distinguished the Cavalier from the Puritan. Grant was in his fighting clothes and his every-day sword by his side, while General Lee, dressed faultlessly as a soldier should always be, carried a court sword, presented him as a honor by the Southerners. So, in wars, Providence does not flourish the showy weapon, but uses a strong and sharp blade without ornamental hilt. Abraham Lincoln was the instrument of Heaven for work--ceaseless, bloody work, hard, for it was that least to his taste.

From boyhood the looks of the wood-chopper and river boatman were subjects of jeering. Whether the budding genius spurned such adventitious aids as graces of person in his career, or was already a philosopher who believed that handsome is that handsome does is a winning motto, we may never know. It is enough that he joined in the laugh and kept the ball rolling.

On the loss of a first love, one Annie Rutledge--a name he said he always loved--his friends were alarmed for his health and sanity. They took away the knife every man carried in the West, and discovered it was the obligatory one presented to the ugliest man and not to be disposed of otherwise than to one still homelier.

There is a record of the clerical gentleman to whom Lincoln was justified in offering it, who died with it in his uncontested possession, in Toronto.

As is the custom, an office-holder going out of his seat calls on the President with his successor to transfer the seals and other tokens. The unlucky man enumerated the good qualities of his substitute, and was surprised that Mr. Lincoln should dilate upon his with excessive regrets that he was going to leave the service. This Mr. Addison was indeed a first-class servant, but uncommonly ill-favored.

"Yes, Addison," said the chief, "I have no doubt that Mr. Price is a pearl of price, but--but nothing can compensate me for the loss of _you_, for, when you retire, I shall be the homeliest man in the government!"

* * * * *

BETTER LOOKING THAN EXPECTED.

(Related by the President to Grace Greenwood):

"As I recall it, the story, told very simply and tersely, but with inimitable drollery, ran that a certain honest old farmer, visiting the capital for the first time, was taken by the member of Congress for his 'deestrict,' to some large gathering or entertainment. He went in order to see the President. Unfortunately, Mr. Lincoln did not appear; and the congressman, being a bit of a wag, and not liking to have his constituent disappointed, designated Mr. R., of Minnesota. He was a gentleman of a particularly round and rubicund countenance. The worthy agriculturist, greatly astonished, exclaimed:

"Is that old Abe? Well, I du declare! He's a better-lookin' man than I expected to see; but it do seem as how his troubles have druv him to drink!'"

* * * * *

LINCOLN AND SUPERSTITION.

Childhood's impressions are ineffaceable, though they may be for a time set aside. Abraham Lincoln with all his lofty mind, acquiesced in the vulgar belief when he took his son Robert to have the benefit of a "madstone," at a distance from where the boy was dog-bitten. He made the pact with the Divine Power as to the Emancipation Act, with a sincerity which robbed worldly wisdom of its sting, and he had dreams and visions like a seer.

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S DREAM.

"Before any great national event I have always had the same dream. I had it the other night. It is a ship sailing rapidly."--(To a friend, in April, 1865. See "Ship of State," a pet simile.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S VISION.

Abraham Lincoln had been nominated for the Presidency. The consummation of his ambition had naturally a deep impression upon him. He came home and threw himself on the lounge, expressly made to let him recline at full-length. It was opposite a bureau on which was a pivoted mirror happening to be so tilted that it reflected him as he lay.

"As I reclined," he says, "my eye fell upon the glass, and I saw two images of myself, exactly alike, except that one was a little paler than the other. I arose and lay down again with the same result. It made me quite uncomfortable for a few minutes, but some friends coming in, the matter passed out of my mind.

"The next day, while walking in the street, I was suddenly reminded of the circumstances, and the disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position--as regards the mirror--and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it then ceased to trouble me. But the God who works through the laws of nature, might surely give a sign to me, if one of His chosen servants, even through the operation of a principle of optics."

This, seeing one's simulacrum, or double, was so common, especially when looking-glasses were full of flaws, designedly cast faulty to give "magical" effects for conjurors, that old books on the black art teem with instances. Lincoln was right to demonstrate that the vision was founded on fact, and no supernatural sight at all. His trying the repetition was like Lord Byron's quashing a similar illusion, but of a suit of clothes hung up to look like a friend whom he believed he saw in the spirit. A more widely read man would have dismissed the "fetch" like the President-elect, but with a laugh.

* * * * *

"IT IS A POOR SERMON THAT DOES NOT HIT SOMEWHERE."

President Lincoln was wont to carry his mother's old Bible about with him in the Capital City. Often he would be consulting it in mental plights. He said that the Psalms was the part he liked best. "The Psalms have something for every day in the week, and something for every poor fellow like me."

* * * * *

THE RELIGION OF FEELING.

Lincoln told a friend that he heard a man named Glenn say at an Indiana church-meeting:

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad; that is my religion!"

* * * * *

THE TWO PRAYERS.

In Lincoln's inaugural address will be found the passage about the sad singularity of the two contendants in the fratricidal combat being Christians alike: "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God." The example is forthcoming. There is plenty of evidence that the speaker always "took counsel of God." His words are: "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go." [Footnote: No longer was Lincoln's piety held as hypocrisy, as in 1860, when a campaign song sneers at

How each night he seeks the closet,
There, alone, to kneel and pray.]

(Connect with the Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee's avowal: "I have never seen the day when I did not pray for the people of the North.")

"Everybody thinks better than anybody."--(Lincoln.) (This is also ascribed to Talleyrand. "It is only the rich who are robbed.")

* * * * *

"WE SHALL SEE OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN!"

For weeks after the death of his son Willie the inconsolable father mourned in particular on that day in each week, and even the military sights at Fortress Monroe to court a change failed to distract him. He was studying Shakespeare. Calling his private secretary to him, he read several passages, and finally that of Queen Constance's lament over her lost child:

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see, and know, our friends in heaven.
(_King John, III., 4._)

"If that be true, I shall see my boy again!" He said:

"Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness that it was not reality? Just so I dream of my boy Willie!"

(Colonel Lamon, the presidential body-guard-in-chief, was the recipient of this spiritual confidence.)

* * * * *

MORE PRAYING AND LESS SWEARING!

On accompanying Mrs. Pomeroy, military nurse, to her hospital, the President discovered that the authorities of the house had forbidden praying to the patients, or even reading the Bible to them, as it was denominational. He promptly removed the restriction, and furthered the visiting missionaries in holding prayer-meetings, read the Scriptures to "his boys in blue," and pray with them as much as they pleased.

"If there was more praying," he said, "and less swearing, it would be far better for our country."

* * * * *

GLOVES OR NO GLOVES.

An old acquaintance of the President's visited him at Washington. Each man's wife insisted on the gentleman, her lord, donning gloves. For they were going as a square party out in the presidential carriage, and the Washingtonians would not accept a king as such unless he dressed as a king. Mr. Lincoln, as a shrewd politician, and married man, put his gloves in his pocket, not to don them until there was no wriggling out of the fix; the other one had his on at the hotel where the carriage came to take that couple up.

They went out and took seats in the vehicle, whereupon the newcomer, seeing that his host was ungloved, went on the rule of leaving the fence bars as you find them. He set to drawing off his kids at the same time as Mr. Lincoln commenced to tug at his to get them on.

"No, no, no!" protested the caller, fetching away his kids, one at a time, "it is none of my doings! Put up your mittens, Lincoln!"

And so they had their ride out without their hands being in guards.

* * * * *

THE USE OF BOOKS.

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new, after all."--(By an Illinois clergyman, knowing Lincoln in the 'Fifties.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S BOOK CRITICISM.

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

* * * * *

THE HAND-TO-HAND ENCOUNTER.

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

* * * * *

BETTER SOMETIMES RIGHT THAN ALL TIMES WRONG.

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

* * * * *

MAKING THE DAGGER STAB THE HOLDER.

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

THE TAIL OF THE KITE.

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

* * * * *

NO DAY WITHOUT A LINE.

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

* * * * *

TRUTH AND THE PEOPLE.

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

* * * * *

"CALL ME 'LINCOLN.'"

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

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

* * * * *

THE ELOQUENT HAND.

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

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

* * * * *

WOMAN.

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

* * * * *

TO THINK AND TO DO WELL.

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

* * * * *

"SET THE TRAP AGAIN!"

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

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

* * * * *

"NO ROYALTY IN OUR CARRIAGE."

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

THE TRAP TO CATCH A DOUGLAS.

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

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

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

In the homely way Lincoln put it, it ran:

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

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

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

* * * * *

PRACTISE BEFORE AND BEHIND "THE BAR."

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

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

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

* * * * *

CONNUBIAL AMITY.

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

* * * * *

THE MODEL WHISKY-BARREL.

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

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

* * * * *

FIGHTING OUT OF ONE COAT INTO THE OTHER.

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

* * * * *

THE PROMISING FACE!

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

* * * * *

"A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND."

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

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

* * * * *

THE CONCERT ON "DRED SCOTT."

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

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

* * * * *

PLAYING CUTTLEFISH.

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

* * * * *

A VOICE FROM THE DEAD.

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

* * * * *

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

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

Lincoln slowly repeated the debated passage:

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

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

But after silent reflection, he suddenly and warmly said:

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

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

* * * * *

COME ONE, COME ALL!

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

"Your name, Mr. President, please!"

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

ASSISTING THE INEVITABLE.

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

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

* * * * *

SELF-SACRIFICE.

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

"It _must_ be done!"

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