''Abe'' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories Part 28

"'You can let me have it! Where did you get so much money?

"'I won it playing draw-poker with your staff, sir!' replied the youth.

"The earliest morning train bore the young man toward his home, and I've been wondering if that boy and that quartermaster had happened to meet at the same table."

ADMIRED THE STRONG MAN.

Governor Hoyt of Wisconsin tells a story of Mr. Lincoln's great admiration for physical strength. Mr. Lincoln, in 1859, made a speech at the Wisconsin State Agricultural Fair. After the speech, in company with the Governor, he strolled about the grounds, looking at the exhibits. They came to a place where a professional "strong man" was tossing cannon b.a.l.l.s in the air and catching them on his arms and juggling with them as though they were light as baseb.a.l.l.s. Mr. Lincoln had never before seen such an exhibition, and he was greatly surprised and interested.

When the performance was over, Governor Hoyt, seeing Mr. Lincoln's interest, asked him to go up and be introduced to the athlete. He did so, and, as he stood looking down musingly on the man, who was very short, and evidently wondering that one so much smaller than he could be so much stronger, he suddenly broke out with one of his quaint speeches. "Why," he said, "why, I could lick salt off the top of your hat."

WISHED THE ARMY CHARGED LIKE THAT.

A prominent volunteer officer who, early in the War, was on duty in Washington and often carried reports to Secretary Stanton at the War Department, told a characteristic story on President Lincoln. Said he: "I was with several other young officers, also carrying reports to the War Department, and one morning we were late. In this instance we were in a desperate hurry to deliver the papers, in order to be able to catch the train returning to camp.

"On the winding, dark staircase of the old War Department, which many will remember, it was our misfortune, while taking about three stairs at a time, to run a certain head like a catapult into the body of the President, striking him in the region of the right lower vest pocket.

"The usual surprised and relaxed grunt of a man thus a.s.sailed came promptly.

"We quickly sent an apology in the direction of the dimly seen form, feeling that the ungracious shock was expensive, even to the humblest clerk in the department.

"A second glance revealed to us the President as the victim of the collision. Then followed a special tender of 'ten thousand pardons,' and the President's reply: "'One's enough; I wish the whole army would charge like that.'"

"UNCLE ABRAHAM" HAD EVERYTHING READY.

"You can't do anything with them Southern fellows," the old man at the table was saying.

"If they get whipped, they'll retreat to them Southern swamps and bayous along with the fishes and crocodiles. You haven't got the fish-nets made that'll catch 'em."

"Look here, old gentleman," remarked President Lincoln, who was sitting alongside, "we've got just the nets for traitors, in the bayous or anywhere."

"Hey? What nets?"

"Bayou-nets!" and "Uncle Abraham" pointed his joke with his fork, spearing a fishball savagely.

NOT AS SMOOTH AS HE LOOKED.

Mr. Lincoln's skill in parrying troublesome questions was wonderful. Once he received a call from Congressman John Ganson, of Buffalo, one of the ablest lawyers in New York, who, although a Democrat, supported all of Mr. Lincoln's war measures. Mr. Ganson wanted explanations. Mr. Ganson was very bald with a perfectly smooth face. He had a most direct and aggressive way of stating his views or of demanding what he thought he was ent.i.tled to. He said: "Mr. Lincoln, I have supported all of your measures and think I am ent.i.tled to your confidence. We are voting and acting in the dark in Congress, and I demand to know--think I have the right to ask and to know--what is the present situation, and what are the prospects and conditions of the several campaigns and armies."

Mr. Lincoln looked at him critically for a moment and then said: "Ganson, how clean you shave!"

Most men would have been offended, but Ganson was too broad and intelligent a man not to see the point and retire at once, satisfied, from the field.

A SMALL CROP.

Chauncey M. Depew says that Mr. Lincoln told him the following story, which he claimed was one of the best two things he ever originated: He was trying a case in Illinois where he appeared for a prisoner charged with aggravated a.s.sault and battery. The complainant had told a horrible story of the attack, which his appearance fully justified, when the District Attorney handed the witness over to Mr. Lincoln, for cross-examination. Mr. Lincoln said he had no testimony, and unless he could break down the complainant's story he saw no way out. He had come to the conclusion that the witness was a b.u.mptious man, who rather prided himself upon his smartness in repartee and, so, after looking at him for some minutes, he said: "Well, my friend, how much ground did you and my client here fight over?"

The fellow answered: "About six acres."

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "don't you think that this is an almighty small crop of fight to gather from such a big piece of ground?"

The jury laughed. The Court and District-Attorney and complainant all joined in, and the case was laughed out of court.

"NEVER REGRET WHAT YOU DON'T WRITE."

A simple remark one of the party might make would remind Mr. Lincoln of an apropos story.

Secretary of the Treasury Chase happened to remark, "Oh, I am so sorry that I did not write a letter to Mr. So-and-so before I left home!"

President Lincoln promptly responded: "Chase, never regret what you don't write; it is what you do write that you are often called upon to feel sorry for."

A VAIN GENERAL.

In an interview between President Lincoln and Petroleum V. Nasby, the name came up of a recently deceased politician of Illinois whose merit was blemished by great vanity. His funeral was very largely attended.

"If General ---- had known how big a funeral he would have had," said Mr. Lincoln, "he would have died years ago."

DEATH BED REPENTANCE.

A Senator, who was calling upon Mr. Lincoln, mentioned the name of a most virulent and dishonest official; one, who, though very brilliant, was very bad.

"It's a good thing for B----" said Mr. Lincoln, "that there is such a thing as a deathbed repentance."

NO CAUSE FOR PRIDE.

A member of Congress from Ohio came into Mr. Lincoln's presence in a state of unutterable intoxication, and sinking into a chair, exclaimed in tones that welled up fuzzy through the gallon or more of whiskey that he contained, "Oh, 'why should (hic) the spirit of mortal be proud?'"

"My dear sir," said the President, regarding him closely, "I see no reason whatever."

THE STORY OF LINCOLN'S LIFE When Abraham Lincoln once was asked to tell the story of his life, he replied: "It is contained in one line of Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard': "'The short and simple annals of the poor.'"

That was true at the time he said it, as everything else he said was Truth, but he was then only at the beginning of a career that was to glorify him as one of the heroes of the world, and place his name forever beside the immortal name of the mighty Washington.

Many great men, particularly those of America, began life in humbleness and poverty, but none ever came from such depths or rose to such a height as Abraham Lincoln.

His birthplace, in Hardin county, Kentucky, was but a wilderness, and Spencer county, Indiana, to which the Lincoln family removed when Abraham was in his eighth year, was a wilder and still more uncivilized region.

The little red schoolhouse which now so thickly adorns the country hillside had not yet been built. There were scattered log schoolhouses, but they were few and far between. In several of these Mr. Lincoln got the rudiments of an education--an education that was never finished, for to the day of his death he was a student and a seeker after knowledge.

Some records of his schoolboy days are still left us. One is a book made and bound by Lincoln himself, in which he had written the table of weights and measures, and the sums to be worked out therefrom. This was his arithmetic, for he was too poor to own a printed copy.

A YOUTHFUL POET.

On one of the pages of this quaint book he had written these four lines of schoolboy doggerel: "Abraham Lincoln, His Hand and Pen, He Will be Good, But G.o.d knows when."

The poetic spirit was strong in the young scholar just then for on another page of the same book he had written these two verses, which are supposed to have been original with him: "Time, what an empty vapor 'tis, And days, how swift they are; Swift as an Indian arrow Fly on like a shooting star.

The present moment just is here, Then slides away in haste, That we can never say they're ours, But only say they're past."

Another specimen of the poetical, or rhyming ability, is found in the following couplet, written by him for his friend, Joseph C. Richardson: "Good boys who to their books apply, Will all be great men by and by."

In all, Lincoln's "schooling" did not amount to a year's time, but he was a constant student outside of the schoolhouse. He read all the books he could borrow, and it was his chief delight during the day to lie under the shade of some tree, or at night in front of an open fireplace, reading and studying. His favorite books were the Bible and Aesop's fables, which he kept always within reach and read time and again.

The first law book he ever read was "The Statutes of Indiana," and it was from this work that he derived his ambition to be a lawyer.

MADE SPEECHES WHEN A BOY.

When he was but a barefoot boy he would often make political speeches to the boys in the neighborhood, and when he had reached young manhood and was engaged in the labor of chopping wood or splitting rails he continued this practice of speech-making with only the stumps and surrounding trees for hearers.

At the age of seventeen he had attained his full height of six feet four inches and it was at this time he engaged as a ferry boatman on the Ohio river, at thirty-seven cents a day.

That he was seriously beginning to think of public affairs even at this early age is shown by the fact that about this time he wrote a composition on the American Government, urging the necessity for preserving the Const.i.tution and perpetuating the Union. A Rockport lawyer, by the name of Pickert, who read this composition, declared that "the world couldn't beat it."

When the dreaded disease, known as the "milk-sick" created such havoc in Indiana in 1829, the father of Abraham Lincoln, who was of a roving disposition, sought and found a new home in Illinois, locating near the town of Decatur, in Macon county, on a bluff overlooking the Sangamon river. A short time thereafter Abraham Lincoln came of age, and having done his duty to his father, began life on his own account.

His first employer was a man named Denton Offut, who engaged Lincoln, together with his step-brother and John Hanks, to take a boat-load of stock and provisions to New Orleans. Offut was so well pleased with the energy and skill that Lincoln displayed on this trip that he engaged him as clerk in a store which Offut opened a few months later at New Salem.

It was while clerking for Offut that Lincoln performed many of those marvelous feats of strength for which he was noted in his youth, and displayed his wonderful skill as a wrestler. In addition to being six feet four inches high he now weighed two hundred and fourteen pounds. And his strength and skill were so great combined that he could out-wrestle and out-lift any man in that section of the country.

During his clerkship in Offut's store Lincoln continued to read and study and made considerable progress in grammar and mathematics. Offut failed in business and disappeared from the village. In the language of Lincoln he "petered out," and his tall, muscular clerk had to seek other employment.

a.s.sISTANT PILOT ON A STEAMBOAT.

In his first public speech, which had already been delivered, Lincoln had contended that the Sangamon river was navigable, and it now fell to his lot to a.s.sist in giving practical proof of his argument. A steamboat had arrived at New Salem from Cincinnati, and Lincoln was hired as an a.s.sistant in piloting the vessel through the uncertain channel of the Sangamon river to the Illinois river. The way was obstructed by a milldam. Lincoln insisted to the owners of the dam that under the Federal Const.i.tution and laws no one had a right to dam up or obstruct a navigable stream and as he had already proved that the Sangamon was navigable a portion of the dam was torn away and the boat pa.s.sed safely through.

"CAPTAIN LINCOLN" PLEASED HIM.

At this period in his career the Blackhawk War broke out, and Lincoln was one of the first to respond to Governor Reynold's call for a thousand mounted volunteers to a.s.sist the United States troops in driving Blackhawk back across the Mississippi. Lincoln enlisted in the company from Sangamon county and was elected captain. He often remarked that this gave him greater pleasure than anything that had happened in his life up to this time. He had, however, no opportunities in this war to perform any distinguished service.

Upon his return from the Blackhawk War, in which, as he said afterward, in a humorous speech, when in Congress, that he "fought, bled and came away," he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Legislature. This was the only time in his life, as he himself has said, that he was ever beaten by the people. Although defeated, in his own town of New Salem he received all of the two hundred and eight votes cast except three.

FAILURE AS A BUSINESS MAN.

Lincoln's next business venture was with William Berry in a general store, under the firm name of Lincoln & Berry, but did not take long to show that he was not adapted for a business career. The firm failed, Berry died and the debts of the firm fell entirely upon Lincoln. Many of these debts he might have escaped legally, but he a.s.sumed them all and it was not until fifteen years later that the last indebtedness of Lincoln & Berry was discharged. During his membership in this firm he had applied himself to the study of law, beginning at the beginning, that is with Blackstone. Now that he had nothing to do he spent much of his time lying under the shade of a tree poring over law books, borrowed from a comrade in the Blackhawk War, who was then a practicing lawyer at Springfield.

GAINS FAME AS A STORY TELLER.

It was about this time, too, that Lincoln's fame as a story-teller began to spread far and wide. His sayings and his jokes were repeated throughout that section of the country, and he was famous as a story-teller before anyone ever heard of him as a lawyer or a politician.

It required no little moral courage to resist the temptation that beset an idle young man on every hand at that time, for drinking and carousing were of daily and nightly occurrence. Lincoln never drank intoxicating liquors, nor did he at that time use tobacco, but in any sports that called for skill or muscle he took a lively interest, even in horse races and c.o.c.k fights.

SURVEYOR WITH NO STRINGS ON HIM.

John Calhoun was at that time surveyor of Sangamon county. He had been a lawyer and had noticed the studious Lincoln. Needing an a.s.sistant he offered the place to Lincoln. The average young man without any regular employment and hard-pressed for means to pay his board as Lincoln was, would have jumped at the opportunity, but a question of principle was involved which had to be settled before Lincoln would accept. Calhoun was a Democrat and Lincoln was a Whig, therefore Lincoln said, "I will take the office if I can be perfectly free in my political actions, but if my sentiments or even expression of them are to be abridged in any way, I would not have it or any other office."

With this understanding he accepted the office and began to study books on surveying, furnished him by his employer. He was not a natural mathematician, and in working out his most difficult problems he sought the a.s.sistance of Mentor Graham, a famous schoolmaster in those days, who had previously a.s.sisted Lincoln in his studies. He soon became a competent surveyor, however, and was noted for the accurate way in which he ran his lines and located his corners.

Surveying was not as profitable then as it has since become, and the young surveyor often had to take his pay in some article other than money. One old settler relates that for a survey made for him by Lincoln he paid two buckskins, which Hannah Armstrong "foxed" on his pants so that the briars would not wear them out.

About this time, 1833, he was made postmaster at New Salem, the first Federal office he ever held. Although the postoffice was located in a store, Lincoln usually carried the mail around in his hat and distributed it to people when he met them.

A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE.

The following year Lincoln again ran for the Legislature, this time as an avowed Whig. Of the four successful candidates, Lincoln received the second highest number of votes.

When Lincoln went to take his seat in the Legislature at Vandalia he was so poor that he was obliged to borrow $200 to buy suitable clothes and uphold the dignity of his new position. He took little part in the proceedings, keeping in the background, but forming many lasting acquaintances and friendships.

Two years later, when he was again a candidate for the same office, there were more political issues to be met, and Lincoln met them with characteristic honesty and boldness. During the campaign he issued the following letter: "New Salem, June 13, 1836.

"To the Editor of The Journal: "In your paper of last Sat.u.r.day I see a communication over the signature of 'Many Voters' in which the candidates who are announced in the journal are called upon to 'show their hands.' Agreed. Here's mine: "I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who a.s.sist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

"If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my const.i.tuents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.

"While acting as their Representative, I shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of public lands to the several States to enable our State, in common with others, to dig ca.n.a.ls and construct railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on it.

"If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White, for President.

"Very respectfully, "A. LINCOLN."

This was just the sort of letter to win the support of the plain-spoken voters of Sangamon county. Lincoln not only received more votes than any other candidate on the Legislative ticket, but the county which had always been Democratic was turned Whig.

THE FAMOUS "LONG NINE."

The other candidates elected with Lincoln were Ninian W. Edwards, John Dawson, Andrew McCormick, "Dan" Stone, William F. Elkin, Robert L. Wilson, "Joe" Fletcher, and Archer G. Herndon. These were known as the "Long Nine." Their average height was six feet, and average weight two hundred pounds.

This Legislature was one of the most famous that ever convened in Illinois. Bonds to the amount of $12,000,000 were voted to a.s.sist in building thirteen hundred miles of railroad, to widen and deepen all the streams in the State and to dig a ca.n.a.l from the Illinois river to Lake Michigan. Lincoln favored all these plans, but in justice to him it must be said that the people he represented were also in favor of them.

It was at this session that the State capital was changed from Vandalia to Springfield. Lincoln, as the leader of the "Long Nine," had charge of the bill and after a long and bitter struggle succeeded in pa.s.sing it.

BEGINS TO OPPOSE SLAVERY.

At this early stage in his career Abraham Lincoln began his opposition to slavery which eventually resulted in his giving liberty to four million human beings. This Legislature pa.s.sed the following resolutions on slavery: "Resolved by the General a.s.sembly, of the State of Illinois: That we highly disapprove of the formation of Abolition societies and of the doctrines promulgated by them.

"That the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slave-holding States by the Federal Const.i.tution, and that they cannot be deprived of that right without their consent, "That the General Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the consent of the citizens of said district without a manifest breach of good faith."

Against this resolution Lincoln entered a protest, but only succeeded in getting one man in the Legislature to sign the protest with him.

The protest was as follows: "Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having pa.s.sed both branches of the General a.s.sembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the pa.s.sage of the same.

"They believe that the inst.i.tution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Const.i.tution to interfere with the inst.i.tution of slavery in the different States.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power under the Const.i.tution to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of the District.

"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the above resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.

"DAN STONE, "A. LINCOLN, "Representatives from the county of Sangamon."