Lincoln's Yarns and Stories Part 78

"HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF THIS PLACE?"

"It seems to me," remarked the President one day while reading, over some of the appealing telegrams sent to the War Department by General McClellan, "that McClellan has been wandering around and has sort of got lost. He's been hollering for help ever since he went South--wants somebody to come to his deliverance and get him out of the place he's got into.

"He reminds me of the story of a man out in Illinois who, in company with a number of friends, visited the State penitentiary. They wandered all through the inst.i.tution and saw everything, but just about the time to depart this particular man became separated from his friends and couldn't find his way out.

"He roamed up and down one corridor after another, becoming more desperate all the time, when, at last, he came across a convict who was looking out from between the bars of his cell-door. Here was salvation at last. Hurrying up to the prisoner he hastily asked,

"'Say! How do you get out of this place?"

"TAD" INTRODUCES "OUR FRIENDS."

President Lincoln often avoided interviews with delegations representing various States, especially when he knew the objects of their errands, and was aware he could not grant their requests. This was the case with several commissioners from Kentucky, who were put off from day to day.

They were about to give up in despair, and were leaving the White House lobby, their speech being interspersed with vehement and uncomplimentary terms concerning "Old Abe," when "Tad" happened along. He caught at these words, and asked one of them if they wanted to see "Old Abe,"

laughing at the same time.

"Yes," he replied.

"Wait a minute," said "Tad," and rushed into his father's office. Said he, "Papa, may I introduce some friends to you?"

His father, always indulgent and ready to make him happy, kindly said, "Yes, my son, I will see your friends."

"Tad" went to the Kentuckians again, and asked a very dignified looking gentleman of the party his name. He was told his name. He then said, "Come, gentlemen," and they followed him.

Leading them up to the President, "Tad," with much dignity, said, "Papa, let me introduce to you Judge ----, of Kentucky;" and quickly added, "Now Judge, you introduce the other gentlemen."

The introductions were gone through with, and they turned out to be the gentlemen Mr. Lincoln had been avoiding for a week. Mr. Lincoln reached for the boy, took him in his lap, kissed him, and told him it was all right, and that he had introduced his friend like a little gentleman as he was. Tad was eleven years old at this time.

The President was pleased with Tad's diplomacy, and often laughed at the incident as he told others of it. One day while caressing the boy, he asked him why he called those gentlemen "his friends." "Well," said Tad, "I had seen them so often, and they looked so good and sorry, and said they were from Kentucky, that I thought they must be our friends." "That is right, my son," said Mr. Lincoln; "I would have the whole human race your friends and mine, if it were possible."

MIXED UP WORSE THAN BEFORE.

The President told a story which most beautifully ill.u.s.trated the muddled situation of affairs at the time McClellan's fate was hanging in the balance. McClellan's work was not satisfactory, but the President hesitated to remove him; the general was so slow that the Confederates marched all around him; and, to add to the dilemma, the President could not find a suitable man to take McClellan's place.

The latter was a political, as well as a military, factor; his friends threatened that, if he was removed, many war Democrats would cast their influence with the South, etc. It was, altogether, a sad mix-up, and the President, for a time, was at his wits' end. He was a.s.sailed on all sides with advice, but none of it was worth acting upon.

"This situation reminds me," said the President at a Cabinet meeting one day not long before the appointment of General Halleck as McClellan's successor in command of the Union forces, "of a Union man in Kentucky whose two sons enlisted in the Federal Army. His wife was of Confederate sympathies. His nearest neighbor was a Confederate in feeling, and his two sons were fighting under Lee. This neighbor's wife was a Union woman and it nearly broke her heart to know that her sons were arrayed against the Union.

"Finally, the two men, after each had talked the matter over with his wife, agreed to obtain divorces; this they, did, and the Union man and Union woman were wedded, as were the Confederate man and the Confederate woman--the men swapped wives, in short. But this didn't seem to help matters any, for the sons of the Union woman were still fighting for the South, and the sons of the Confederate woman continued in the Federal Army; the Union husband couldn't get along with his Union wife, and the Confederate husband and his Confederate wife couldn't agree upon anything, being forever fussing and quarreling.

"It's the same thing with the Army. It doesn't seem worth while to secure divorces and then marry the Army and McClellan to others, for they won't get along any better than they do now, and there'll only be a new set of heartaches started. I think we'd better wait; perhaps a real fighting general will come along some of these days, and then we'll all be happy. If you go to mixing in a mix-up, you only make the muddle worse."

"LONG ABE'S" FEET "PROTRUDED OVER."

George M. Pullman, the great sleeping-car builder, once told a joke in which Lincoln was the prominent figure. In fact, there wouldn't have been any joke had it not been for "Long Abe." At the time of the occurrence, which was the foundation for the joke--and Pullman admitted that the latter was on him--Pullman was the conductor of his only sleeping-car. The latter was an experiment, and Pullman was doing everything possible to get the railroads to take hold of it.

"One night," said Pullman in telling the story, "as we were about going out of Chicago--this was long before Lincoln was what you might call a renowned man--a long, lean, ugly man, with a wart on his cheek, came into the depot. He paid me fifty cents, and half a berth was a.s.signed him. Then he took off his coat and vest and hung them up, and they fitted the peg about as well as they fitted him. Then he kicked off his boots, which were of surprising length, turned into the berth, and, undoubtedly having an easy conscience, was sleeping like a healthy baby before the car left the depot.

"Pretty soon along came another pa.s.senger and paid his fifty cents. In two minutes he was back at me, angry as a wet hen.

"'There's a man in that berth of mine,' said he, hotly, 'and he's about ten feet high. How am I going to sleep there, I'd like to know? Go and look at him.'

"In I went--mad, too. The tall, lank man's knees were under his chin, his arms were stretched across the bed and his feet were stored comfortably--for him. I shook him until he awoke, and then told him if he wanted the whole berth he would have to pay $1.

"'My dear sir,' said the tall man, 'a contract is a contract. I have paid you fifty cents for half this berth, and, as you see, I'm occupying it. There's the other half,' pointing to a strip about six inches wide.

'Sell that and don't disturb me again.'

"And so saying, the man with a wart on his face went to sleep again. He was Abraham Lincoln, and he never grew any shorter afterward. We became great friends, and often laughed over the incident."

COULD LICK ANY MAN IN THE CROWD.

When the enemies of General Grant were bothering the President with emphatic and repeated demands that the "Silent Man" be removed from command, Mr. Lincoln remained firm. He would not consent to lose the services of so valuable a soldier. "Grant fights," said he in response to the charges made that Grant was a butcher, a drunkard, an incompetent and a general who did not know his business.

"That reminds me of a story," President Lincoln said one day to a delegation of the "Grant-is-no-good" style.

"Out in my State of Illinois there was a man nominated for sheriff of the county. He was a good man for the office, brave, determined and honest, but not much of an orator. In fact, he couldn't talk at all; he couldn't make a speech to save his life.

"His friends knew he was a man who would preserve the peace of the county and perform the duties devolving upon him all right, but the people of the county didn't know it. They wanted him to come out boldly on the platform at political meetings and state his convictions and principles; they had been used to speeches from candidates, and were somewhat suspicious of a man who was afraid to open his mouth.

"At last the candidate consented to make a speech, and his friends were delighted. The candidate was on hand, and, when he was called upon, advanced to the front and faced the crowd. There was a glitter in his eye that wasn't pleasing, and the way he walked out to the front of the stand showed that he knew just what he wanted to say.

"'Feller Citizens,' was his beginning, the words spoken quietly, 'I'm not a speakin' man; I ain't no orator, an' I never stood up before a lot of people in my life before; I'm not goin' to make no speech, 'xcept to say that I can lick any man in the crowd!'"

HIS WAY TO A CHILD'S HEART.

Charles E. Anthony's one meeting with Mr. Lincoln presents an interesting contrast to those of the men who shared the emanc.i.p.ator's interest in public affairs. It was in the latter part of the winter of 1861, a short time before Mr. Lincoln left for his inauguration at Washington. Judge Anthony went to the Sherman House, where the President-elect was stopping, and took with him his son, Charles, then but a little boy. Charles played about the room as a child will, looking at whatever interested him for the time, and when the interview with his father was over he was ready to go.

But Mr. Lincoln, ever interested in little children, called the lad to him and took him upon his great knee.

"My impression of him all the time I had been playing about the room,"

said Mr. Anthony, "was that he was a terribly homely man. I was rather repelled. But no sooner did he speak to me than the expression of his face changed completely, or, rather, my view of it changed. It at once became kindly and attractive. He asked me some questions, seeming instantly to find in the turmoil of all the great questions that must have been heavy upon him, the very ones that would go to the thought of a child. I answered him without hesitation, and after a moment he patted my shoulder and said:

"'Well, you'll be a man before your mother yet,' and put me down.