The Lincoln Story Book Part 22

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

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

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

"Thunder! likely enough you did! n.o.body 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 pract.i.tioner 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 Emanc.i.p.ation Act," when the joke pa.s.sed 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 n.i.g.g.e.r, 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 p.r.o.nouncing 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 pa.s.sages 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.