The Lincoln Story Book Part 25

"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 clas.h.i.+ng 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 Ma.s.sachusetts: "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 circ.u.mstances?"--(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 coa.r.s.e, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Inst.i.tute, 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 "G.o.d 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 carca.s.s so that the host naturally charged him with the feast.