The Lincoln Story Book Part 4

TURN OUT OR BE TURNED OUT.

Superintendent Tinker, of the W. U. T., says he heard Secretary Seward say to President Lincoln:

"Mr. President, I hear that you turned out for a colored woman on a muddy crossing the other day?"

"Did you?" returned the other laughingly. "Well, I don't remember it; but I always make it a rule, if people do not turn out for me, I will for them. If I didn't, there would be a collision."

THE BEST THING TO TAKE.

When Lincoln worked in and kept a grocery-store, it was flanked by a groggery and he had to supply spirits, but from that fact he saw the evils of the saloon and early identified himself with the novel temperance movement. In 1843, he joined the Sons of Temperance. While he said he was temperate on theory, it was not so--he was practically abstinent. Not only did he lecture publicly, but, at one such occasion, he gave out the pledges. In decorating a boy, Cleophas Breckenridge, with a badge, after he took the pledge, he said:

"Sonny, that is the best thing you will ever _take_."

DRINKING AND SWALLOWING ARE TWO THINGS.

It has been stated that Lincoln, after reigning at the village store, had become the idol of the settlement. A stranger to whom he was shown was not properly impressed. One of the clerk's friends, William Greene, bragged that his favorite was the strongest man in the towns.h.i.+p--this was not affecting the critic--and even went on: "The strongest in the country!"

"H'm! not the strongest in the State!" denied the stranger. "I know a man who can lift a barrel of flour as easily as I can a peck of potatoes."

"Abe, there, could lift _two_ barrels of flour if he could get a hold on them."

"You can beat me telling 'raisers', but--"

"Taking a lift out of you or not, I am willing to bet that Abe will lift a barrel of spirits and drink out of the bunghole to prove he can hold it there!"

"Impossible! What will you lay on the thing?"

They made a wager of a new hat--the Sunday hat of beaver being still costly.

Greene was betting unfairly--on a sure thing--as he had seen his friend do what he a.s.serted, all but the drinking flourish. Lincoln was averse to the wagering at all, but to help his friend to the hat, he consented to the feat. He pa.s.sed through it, lifting the cask between his two hands and holding the spigot-hole to his lips while he imbibed a mouthful. As he was slowly lowering the barrel to the floor, the winner exclaimed jubilately:

"I knew you would do it; but I never knew you to drink whisky before!"

The barrel was stood on the floor, when the drinker calmly expelled the mouthful of its contents, and drolly remarked:

"And I have not _drunk_ that, you see!"

As a return for his action to win the hat, he asked Greene not to wager any more--a resolve which he took to oblige him.

WORSTED IN A HORSE-TRADE.

Until Lincoln--seeing that his decisions created enemies, whichever way they fell--renounced being umpire for horse-racing and the like events, momentous on the border, he officiated in many such pastimes.

Before he found them "all wrong," he had a horsy acquaintance in a judge. This was at a time when he was practising law, which involved riding on circuit, as the court went round to give sittings like the ancient English justices, attending a.s.sizes. During such excursions, they played practical jokes, naturally. Among their singular contests was a bet of twenty-five dollars--as forfeit if, in horse-swapping, the loser rejected the horse offered on even terms with the one he "put in." Neither was to know anything of the equine paragon until simultaneously exhibited.

As good sport was indicated where two such arrant jokers were in conflict, a vast throng filled the tavern-yard where the pair were to draw conclusions. At the appointed hour the court functionary dragged upon the scene a most dilapidated _simulacrum_ of man's n.o.blest conquest--blind, spavined, lean as Pharaoh's _kind_, creeking in every joint--at the same time that his fellow wagerer carried on under his long arm a carpenter's _horse_--gashed with adze and broadax, bored with the augur, trenched with saw and draw-knife--singed, paint, and tar-spotted, crazy in each leg of the three still adhering--in short, justifying Lincoln to reverse his cry at viewing the real animal:

"Jedge (for judge), this is the first time I ever _got the worst_ of it in a hoss-trade!"

HOW MANY SHORT BREATHS?

In the nearest town to the Lincolns lived a man called "Captain"

Larkins. He was short and fat, and consequently "puffing." He was logically fond of "blowing." For example, if he bought any object, he would proclaim that it was the best article of its sort in the settlement. His favorite orating-ground--in fact, the only theater for displays was the front of the village store, where, among the farmers who came in to d.i.c.ker and purchase stores, he would dilate. Lincoln did not like the pompous little fellow whose rotund and diminutive figure was in glaring contrast to his own--a young man, but colossal, while his stature was augmented by his meagerness.

"Gentlemen," bawled Larkins, "I have the best horse in the county!

I ran him three miles in two-forty each and he never fetched a long breath!"

"H'm!" interrupted Lincoln, looking down at the man panting with excitement; "why don't you tell us how many short breaths _you_ drew?"

LINCOLN'S HEIGHT.

One of the committee appointed to acquaint Mr. Lincoln formally with the decision of the Chicago Presidential Convention of 1860 was Judge Kelly, a man of unusual stature. At the meeting with the nominee he eyed the latter with admiration and the jealousy the exceptional cherish for rivals. This had not escaped the curious Lincoln; he asked him, as he singled him out: "What is your height?"

"Six feet three. What is yours?"

"Six feet four." [Footnote: This will probably never be exactly settled now. Speaker Reed agreed with this statement. But Miss Emma Gurley Adams, in a position to know, published in the New York _Press_: "Mr. Lincoln told my father that he was exactly six feet three inches." This was at the end of his life. The contrariety of the a.s.sertions simply baffles one.]

"Then, sir, Pennsylvania bows to Illinois," responded the judge.

"My dear sir, for years my heart has been aching for a President I could look up to, and I have found him at last in the land where we thought there were none but _little_ giants."

(Stephen Douglas, leader of the Democratic party, was a pocket Daniel Webster and bearing the by-name of "the Little Giant.")

MEASURES AND MEN.

The earlier audiences at the White House were inspired by ludicrous ideas, far between patriotism and interest in the "tall Hoosier." The habitual attendants and guards soon discovered that the chief was an unrivaled host, adapting modes of reception to the differing kind of callers. He noticed once two young men who hung about the door, so that, sympathizing with the shy--for he had been wofully troubled by that feeling in his youth--he went over to the pair, and to make them feel at home, asked them to be seated while they looked on. But they didn't care for chairs. The shorter of the two stammered that he and his friend had a talk about the President's unusual height, and would the host kindly settle the matter, and see whether he were as tall as his excellency.