The Lincoln Story Book Part 21

"'If you want to find a mewl in a lot, you must turn him into the one next to it.'"

Only the rebel "fly-by-nights" were more like the Irishman's flea--"when you put your hand on him, he was not there!"

"MATCHING" STORIES.

The President looking in at the telegraph-room in the White House, happened to find Major Eckert in. He saw he was counting greenbacks.

So he said jokingly:

"I believe you never come to business now but to handle money!"

The officer pleaded that it was a mere coincidence, and instanced a story in point:

"A certain tailor in Mansfield, Ohio, was very stylish in dress and airy in manner. Pa.s.sing a storekeeper's door one day, the latter puffed himself up and emitted a long blow, expressive of the inflation to oozing-point of the conceited tailor, who indignantly turned and said: 'I will teach you to blow when I am pa.s.sing!' to which the storekeeper replied: 'And I'll teach you not to pa.s.s when I am blowing!'"

"Very good!" returned the hearer. "That is very like a story _I_ heard of a man driving about the country in an open buggy, caught at night by a pouring rain. Pa.s.sing a farmhouse, a man, apparently struggling with the effects of whisky, thrust his head out of a window, and shouted loudly:

"'h.e.l.lo!'

"The traveler stopped for all of his hurry for shelter and asked what was wanted.

"'Nothing of you!' was the blunt reply.

"'Well, what in the infernals are you shouting 'h.e.l.lo' for when people are pa.s.sing?' angrily asked the traveler.

"'Well, what in the infernals are you pa.s.sing for when people are shouting h.e.l.lo?'"

The rival story-tellers parted "at evens."

THE ONLY DISCREDIT.

A backhanded compliment of the acutest nature is credited to Lincoln as a lawyer and gentleman. A Major Hill accused him of maligning Mrs.

Hill, upon which Lincoln denied the accusation and apologized with "whitewash" which blacked the bystander:

"I entertain the highest regard for Mrs. Hill, and the only thing I know to her discredit is that she is Major Hill's wife!"

NO RE-LIE-ANCE OF THEM!

Mrs. Secretary Welles, more susceptible about press attacks on her idol--and everybody in Washington officialdom's idol--the President, called attention to fresh quips and innuendoes.

"Pshaw! let pa.s.s; the papers are not always reliable. That is to say, Mrs. Welles," interposed the object of the missiles, "they lie, and then they _re-lie_!"

NO VICES--FEW VIRTUES.

Some one was smoking in the presence of the President, and had complimented him on having no vices--such as drinking or smoking.

"That is a doubtful compliment," said the host. "I recollect being once outside a coach in Illinois, and a man sitting beside me offered me a. cigar. I told him I had no vices. He said nothing, smoked for some time, and then grunted out:

"'It's my experience that folks who have no vices have plaguey few virtues.'"

(Mrs. General Lander--Miss Jean Davenport, of stage life, the original of d.i.c.kens' "Miss Crummies"--must have heard this in the presidential circle, for she would say: "If a man has no petty vices, he has great ones.")

A later version ascribes the reproof to a brother Kentuckian, also a stage companion, variation sufficient to prove the happening.

THE APPLES OF HIS EYE.

"Up in the State, out my way," says the narrator, "there was a farmer in the days when his sort were not called agriculturists; he kep' an orchard, at the same time, without being called a horticulturist.

He was just another kind of 'Johnny Appleseed,' for he doted on apples and used to beg slips and seeds of any new variety until he had one hundred and eighty-two trees in his big orchard. I have counted them and longed for them, early, mid, and late harvest--he fit off the bug and the blight and the worm like a wizard. If there was any one thing save his orchard he doted upon it was a daughter o' his'n, her name being Rose, and all that you can cram of lush and bright-red and rosy-posy nicety into that name. An' yet he hankered much on the latest addition to his garden--a New York State apple as he sent for and 'tended to at great outlay of time, anyway. 'This here daughter'

and 'that there apple-tree' were his delights. You might say the Rose and the Baldwin, that were the brand of the fruit, were the apples of his two eyes!

"Well, there were two men around there, who cast sheep's eyes, not to say wolfish ones, at the fruit and the girl. They Both expected to have the other by getting the one. Well, one of those days the pair of young fellers lounged along and kinder propped up the old man's fence around the orchard. They was looking out of the tail of the eye more for the Rose than the other thing in the garden. But they could not help spying the Baldwin. It was the off year, anyhow, for apples, and this here one being first in fruiting had been spared in but one blossom, and so the old man cared for it with prodigious love.

As mostly comes to pa.s.s with special fruit, this one being petted, throve--well, you have no idea how an apple tended to can thrive.

It was big and red and meller! Well, one of the fellers, being the cutest, he saw the other had his cane with him and was spearing a windfall every now and then, and seeing how close he could come to flipping the ears of a hog wallering down the lane, or mayhap a horse looking over the paddock fence. Then a notion struck him.

"'Lem,' said he, for the rival's name was Lem, for Lemuel; 'Lem,' he says, 'I bet you a dollar you can't fire at that lone apple and knock it off the stem--a dollar coin!' For they were talking in c.o.o.nskins them times. So Lem he takes the bet, and, sticking an apple on the switch, sends it kiting with such accuracy of aim that it plumps the Baldwin, ker-chung! in the plum center, and away fly both apples.

Then, while he grabbed the dollar--the girl and the old soul come out, and the old soul see the pet apple rolling half-dented at his feet, and the girl ran between him and the two men. But the feller who was such a good shot, he sees a leetle too late what he had lost for a dollar and he scooted, with the old man invoking all the cusses of Herod agin' him.

"The other feller he opened the gate as bold as a brazen calf, and said, antic.i.p.ating the old man:

"'Oh, _I_ don't come for apples--I want to spark your darter!'"

THE WHETSTONE STORY.

Abraham Lincoln was not given to boasting, but he did pride himself on his gift of memory of faces. It included all sorts of things. Among the soldiers calling at the White House was one from his section.

He knew him at sight, used his name, and said: