The Lincoln Story Book by Henry L. Williams

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Lincoln rose for the final, without eliciting any emotion from him. He
dilated on the evidence, which he asserted boldly was proof of a plot
against an innocent youth. He called the principal witness back to
the stand, and caused him definitely to repeat that he had _seen_
Armstrong strike the fatal stroke, with a slung-shot undoubtedly, and
by "the light of the moon." The proof that his accusation was false
was in the advocate's hand--the almanac, which the usher handed into
the jury, while the judge consulted one on his desk.

The whole story was a fabrication to avenge a personal enmity, and the
rock of the prosecution was blasted by the defense's fiery eloquence.

The arbiters went out for half an hour, but the audience, waiting in
breathless impatience, discounted the result. The twelve filed in to
utter the alleviating "Not guilty!" and the liberator was able to
fulfil his pledge.

It was not sunset, and the prisoner was free to comfort his mother.

In vain did she talk of paying a fee, and the man supported the desire
by alleging his intention to work the debt out. Lincoln said in the
old familiar tongue:

"Aunt Hannah, I sha'n't charge you a _red_--I said 'without money
or price!' And anything I can do for you and yours shall not cost you
a cent."

Soon after, as she wrote to him of an attempt to deprive her of her
land, he bade her force a case into the court; if adverse there,
appeal to the Supreme Court, where his law firm would act, and he
would fight it out.

(Regarding the rescued man, he enlisted in the war at the first call.
He was still in the ranks two years later, when his mother, in her
loneliness, begged for him of the President-commander-in-chief, for
his release to come home. His leave was immediately written out by
Lincoln's own hand, and the soldier went home from Kentucky. He
remained a valuable citizen. It was Lincoln's speech and the moonbeam
of inspiration that saved him.)

* * * * *

"NICE CLOTHES MAY MAKE A HANDSOME MAN--EVEN OF YOU!"

In 1832, Lincoln, elected to the Illinois legislative chamber, found
himself in one of those anguishing embarrassments besetting him in all
the early stages of his unflagging ascent from the social slough of
despond. Unlike eels, he never got used to skinning. For the new
station, however well provided mentally, he had no means to procure
dress fit for the august halls of debate.

He was yet standing behind the counter in Offutt's general shop at New
Salem, when an utter stranger strolled in, asked his name, though his
exceptional stature and unrivaled mien revealed his identity, and
announced his own name. Each had heard of the other. The newcomer
was not an Adonis, perhaps, but he was one compared with the awkward,
leaning Tower of Pisa "cornstalk," who carried the jack-knife as "the
homeliest man in the section." Lincoln was doubly the _plainest_
speaker there and thereabouts.

"Mr. Smoot," began the clerk, "I am disappointed in you, sir! I
expected to see a scaly specimen of humanity!"

"Mr. Lincoln, I am sorely disappointed in you, in whom I expected to
see a _good-looking_ man!"

After this jocular exchange of greeting, the joke cemented friendship
between them. The proof of the friendship is in the usefulness of it.
Lincoln turned to this acquaintance in his dilemma.

This future President may have divined the saying of the similarly
martyred McKinley--about "the cheap clothes making a cheap man."
He summed up his situation:

"I must certainly have decent clothes to go there among the
celebrities."

No doubt, the State capital had other fashions than those prevailing
at Sangamon town, where even the shopkeeper's present attire, in which
he had solicited suffrages, was scoffed at as below the mark. It was
composed of "flax and tow-linen pantaloons (one Ellis, storekeeper,
describes from eye-witnessing), I thought, about five inches too short
in the legs, exposing blue-yarn socks (the original of the Farmers'
_Sox_ of our mailorder magazines); no vest or coat; and but one
suspender. He wore a calico shirt, as he had in the Black Hawk War;
coarse brogans, tan color."

"As you voted for me," went on the ambitious man about to exchange the
counter for the rostrum, "you must want me to make a decent appearance
in the state-house?"

"Certainly," was the reply, as anticipated, Lincoln was so sure of his
wheedling ways by this time.

And the friend in need supplied him with two hundred dollars currency,
which, according to the budding legislator's promise, he returned out
of his first pay as representative.

* * * * *

THE ABUTMENT WAS DUBERSOME.

President Lincoln was told that the Northern and Southern Democrats
had at last accomplished a fusion.

"Well, I believe you, of course," said he to the informant, "but I
have my doubts of the foundation, like my friend Brown. Brown is a
sound church member. He was member, too, of a township committee,
having to receive bids for building a bridge over a deep and rapid
river. The contractors did not seem to like the proposition, so Brown
called in an architectural acquaintance, named--we will say, Jones.
At the question 'Can you build this bridge?' he was overbold, and
replied: 'Yes, sir, or any other. I could build a bridge from Sodom
to Gomorrah with abutment below.' The committee being good and select
men were shocked at the strong language, and Brown was called upon to
defend his protege.

"'I know Jones well enough,' he rejoined, 'and he is so honest a man
and good a builder, that if he states positively that he can build a
bridge from Sodom to Gomorrah, why, I believe him! But--I feel bound
to state that I am in some doubt as to the abutment on the other
side!'

"My friend, I reassert I have my doubts about the abutment!"

* * * * *

"GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE PRESIDENT."

It was while at the store in New Salem that Lincoln made the
acquaintance of Richard Yates, contemporarily in office with him as
war governor of Illinois. So proud were the citizens of the colloquial
abilities of their rising young man that they used to show him to
visitors as their lion. Yates was introduced and stayed to hear
him roar. Later, Lincoln asked him to join him in his noon meal at
the cabin where a woman boarded him. The latter was one of those
good souls who give the best in the larder, but are all the time
apologizing. They had happened upon the ordinarily plain repast of
bread--home-made, and of the sweetest corn--and milk from the cow.
Flurried by the unknown company, the auntie, in dealing out the bowls
to a numerous family, somehow, between herself and Lincoln, let the
vessel slip, and, falling to the floor, it was smashed and the milk
wasted. Lincoln disputed it was her fault, as she politely averred.
She continued to argue for her guiltiness.

"Oh, very well," said Lincoln, at last, "we will not wrangle on whose
was the slip, or if it does not trouble you it will not trouble
_me_. Anyway, what is a basin of pap?--nothing to fret about!"

"Mr. Lincoln, you are wrong"--the woman remembered the children to
whom a lesson ought to be given--"a dish of bread and milk is fit for
the President of these United States."

Both the guests acquiesced. The cream of a story is in the
application. Years afterward, when the man from Sangamon, the unknown,
occupied the curule chair, an elderly woman from Illinois called at
the White House and requested an interview. It was the Aunt Lizzie
of the above episode. Her mere mention of being "home folks" won her
admittance, and her recognition the best of the Executive Mansion
lard-pantry. When she had finished the elegant collation, and
intermingled the tasty morsels with reminiscences, the host slyly
inquired if now in the Presidential dwelling she stuck to the
sentiments about the diet enunciated in her log cabin.

"Indeedy, I do! I still stick to it that bread and milk is a good
enough dish for the President."

Lincoln smiled with his sad smile. He had been long--not to say a
lengthy--martyr to dyspepsia, and she uttered a truism that struck
him to the--the digestive apparatus!

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S FIRST POLITICAL SPEECH.

In 1831, or '32, Abraham Lincoln made his maiden political speech at
Pappsville (or Richland), Illinois. He was twenty-three, and timid,
and the preceding speakers had "rolled the sun nearly down." The
speech is, therefore, short and agreeable:

"Gentlemen, fellow citizens: I presume you all know who I am. I am
humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become
a candidate for the legislature. My politics are short and sweet--
like an old woman's dance! I am in favor of a national bank, the
international improvement scheme, and a high protective tariff.
These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I will
be thankful. If defeated, it will be all the same!"--(Springfield
_Republican_.)

* * * * *

A LIGHTNING-ROD TO PROTECT A GUILTY CONSCIENCE!

One term in the Illinois State legislature only whetted the
predestined politician for a seat again at that table, though it was
not he who won the loaves and the fishes. He was to speak at
Springfield, the more gloriously welcomed as he was prominent in the
movement hereafter realized, of changing the capital from Vandalia to
this more energetic town.

The meeting had foreboded ill, as a serious wrangle between two of the
preceding speakers threatened to end in a challenge to a duel, still
a fashionable diversion. But Lincoln intervened with a speech so
enthralling that the hearers forgot the dispute and heard him out
with rapture. He had found the proper way to manage his voice, never
musical, by controlling the nasal twang into a monotonous but audible
sharpness, "carrying" to a great distance. He was followed by
one George Forquer (Farquhar or Forquier), a facing-both-ways,
profit-taking politician, who had achieved his end by obtaining an
office. This was the land-office register at this town. He had been
a prominent Whig representative in 1834. The turncoat assailed Lincoln
bitterly (much as Pitt was derided in his beginning) and had begun his
piece by announcing that "the young man (Lincoln) must be taken down."
As if to live up to the lucrative berth, Mr. Forquer had finished a
frame-house--Springfield still had log houses, and not only in the
environs, either!--and to cap the novelty, had that other new feature,
a lightning-rod, put upon it. The object of the slur at youth had
listened to the diatribe, flattering only so far as he was singled
out.

Mr. Joshua F. Speed, a bosom friend of Lincoln, reports the retort as
follows:

"The gentleman says that 'this young man must be taken down.' It is
for you, not for me, to say whether I am up or down. The gentleman
has alluded to my being a young man; I am older in years than in the
tricks and trades of politicians.

"I desire to live, and I desire place and distinction as a politician;
but I would rather die now than, like the gentleman, live to see the
day that I would have to erect a lightning-rod to protect a guilty
conscience from an offended God!"

Mr. Speed says that the reply was characterized by great force and
dignity. The happy image of the lightning-rod for a conscience has
passed into the fixed-star stage of a household word throughout the
West.

* * * * *

FIRING ON A FLEA FOR A SQUIRREL.

In 1841, while serving a term in the Illinois legislature, Lincoln
was the longest of the Sangamon representatives, distinguished as
the Long Nine. They were much hampered by an old member who tried
to put a stopper upon any measure on the set ground that it was
"un-con-sti-tu-tional." Lincoln was selected to "spike his gun."
A measure was introduced benefiting the Sangamon district, so that its
electee might befittingly push it, and defend it. He was warrantably
its usher when the habitual interrupter bawled his stereotyped:

"Unconstitutional!"

The "quasher" is reported as follows in the local press, if not in the
journal of the House, which one need not, perhaps, consult:

"Mr. Speaker," said the son of the Sangamon Vale, "the attack of the
member from Wabash County upon the un-con-sti-tu-tion-al-i-ty of this
measure reminds me of an old friend of mine.

"He k a peculiar-looking old fellow, with shaggy, overhanging
eyebrows, and a pair of spectacles under them. (This description
fitted the Wabash member, at whom all gaze was directed.)

"One morning just after the old soul got up, he imagined he saw a gray
squirrel on a tree near his house. So he took down his rifle, and
fired at the squirrel, as he believed, but the squirrel paid no
attention to the shot. He loaded and fired again and again, until, at
the thirteenth shot, he set down his gun impatiently, and said to his
boy, looking on:

"'Boy, there's something wrong about this rifle.'

"'Rifle's all right--I know it is,' answered the boy; 'but where's
your squirrel?'

"'Don't you see him, humped up about half-way up the tree?' inquired
the old man, peering over his spectacles and getting mystified.

"'No, I don't,' responded the boy; and then turning and looking into
his father's face, he exclaimed: 'Yes, I spy your squirrel! You have
been firing at a flea on your own brow!'"

This modern version of seeing the mote and not the beam in one's own
eye smothered the member for Wabash in laughter, and he _dropped_
the standard objection of "unconstitutional" as he had not his mark.

* * * * *

THE CREAM OF THE JOKE.

By reason of the distances and the lonesomeness, it was the pleasant
habit of candidates to make their electioneering tours together. In
seeking reelection in 1838, Lincoln was accompanied by Mr. Ewing. They
stopped at one country house about dark, when the good wife was going
a-milking, while her husband was still a-field. Intent on securing
her, as she had the repute of being "the gray mare," the two partizans
accompanied her to the paddock. Ewing, to show his gallantry as
well as his familiarity with farm work--a main point in such
communities--offered to relieve the dame of the pail and fill it,
while she rested. In the meantime, Lincoln chatted with her, so that
Ewing could hardly get a word in. At his finishing his self-chosen
task, he beheld the pair deeply absorbed, for Lincoln had exercised
his glib tongue to such advantage as to secure her influence over
her man's vote.

* * * * *

PARALLEL COURSES.

In the thirteenth Congress, Jefferson Davis was in the Senate, while
Lincoln and Alexander Stephens were in the House.

* * * * *

JUMPING JIM CROW!

When in Congress, he was a conscience Whig, as opposed to the cotton
ones--that is, for the anti-slavery doctrine and not "cottoning" for
the South. He wrote home:

"As you (at Springfield) are all so anxious for me to distinguish
myself, I have concluded to do so before long." He nearly
ex-tinguished himself, for suddenly he went right about face--
according to the popular song--quite a political if not a
politic course:

You wheel about and jump about, and do just so!
And ebery time you jump about, you jump Jim Crow!

He had gone against the general tide in hindering the Mexican War
as sure to bring Texas into the Union as a slave State, yet now he
espoused its hero, "Rough and Ready" Taylor. He had to excuse himself
as recognizing that the general was the Whigs' best candidate, and as
the Whig National Convention agreed with him, the apparent truckling
was condoned.

* * * * *

FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS.

"Your letter on McClellan reminds me of a story that I (A. Lincoln)
heard in Washington, when I was here before. There was an editor
in Rhode Island noted for his love of fun--it came to him
irresistibly--and he could not help saying just what came to his mind.
He was appointed postmaster by Tyler. Some time after Tyler vetoed the
Bank Bill, and came into disrepute with the Whigs, a conundrum went
the round of the papers. It was as follows: 'Why is John Tyler like
an ass?' This editor copied the conundrum and could not resist the
temptation to answer it, which he did thus: 'Because he _is_ an
ass!' This piece of fun cost him his head--but it was a
fact!"--(_Chatauque Democrat_.)

* * * * *

THE PARTY GAD.

"In 1846, General Cass was for the (Wilmot) Proviso [Footnote:
Wilmot Proviso: that money to buy Mexican land should not go toward
slave-buying.] at once; in March, 1846, he was still for it, but not
just then; and in December, 1847, he was against it altogether. When
the question was raised in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to
take ground for it. He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the
uninteresting position of a mere follower; but soon he began to see
a glimpse of the great Democratic ox-gad waving in his face, and to
hear indistinctly a voice saying:

"'Back, back, sir; back a little!'

"He shakes his head and bats his eyes, and blunders back to his
position of March, 1847; and still the gad waves and the voice grows
more distinct and sharper still:

"'Back, sir! back, I say! farther back!' And back he goes to the
position of December, 1847, at which the gad is still, and the voice
soothingly says:

"'So! stand still at that!'"--(Speech by A. Lincoln, House of
Representatives, Washington, July 27, 1848.)

* * * * *

HARD TO BEAT!

Of his Washington experience in 1848, Lincoln brought a pack of tales
about the statesmen then prominent. He declared to have heard of
Daniel Webster the subjoined:

In school little Dan had been guilty of some misdoing for which he
was called up to the teacher to be caned on the hand. His hands were
dirty, and to save appearance he moistened his right hand, on his
way up, and wiped it on his pants. Nevertheless, it looked so foul
on presentation to the ferule that the teacher sharply protested:

"Well, this is hard to beat! If you will find another hand in this
room as filthy, I will let you off!"

Daniel popped out his left hand, modestly kept in the background, and
readily cried:

"Here it is, sir!"

(Told by Lincoln before "the Honorable Mr. Odell, and others." This
is not the ex-governor, Mr. Odell, of New York, who pleads guilty
to the editor of "being too young to have the honor of speaking with
Mr. Lincoln." The worse luck--both would have profited by the mutual
pleasure.)

* * * * *

"I RECKON I TOOK MORE THAN MY SHARE."

Lincoln confessed at the outset of life that he was going to avoid
society, as its frequentation was incompatible with study. He avowed
at the same time that he liked it, which enhanced the sacrifice. No
doubt so, since his Washington sojourn and his legal and legislative
company earned him the title of the prince of good fellows. To be
coupled with the genial Martin van Buren with the same epithet was,
indeed, a compliment.

At Washington he had, in 1848, made acquaintance with the fashionable
world. He preferred the livelier and less strait ways of the
Congressional boarding-house table, the Saturday parties at Daniel
Webster's, and the motley crowd at the bowling-alley, as well as
the chatterers' corner in the Congressional post-office. Still, as
chairman of a committee, and by reason of his being a wonder from the
hirsute West, he was invited to the receptions and feasts of the first
families. Green to the niceties of the table, he committed errors--so
frankly apologized for and humorously treated that he lost no
standing.

At one dinner the experience was new to him of the dish of currant
jelly being passed around for each guest to transfer a little to his
plate. So he took it as a sweet, oddly accompanying the venison,
and left but little on the general plate. But after tasting it, he
perceived that the compote-dish was going the rounds, and suddenly
looking pointedly at his plate and then at the hostess, with a
troubled air, he said, with convincing simplicity:

"It looks as though I took more than my share."--(Supplied by the
hostess, and collected by J. R. Speed.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN WAS LOADED FOR BEAR.

An eminent man of politics has said that the similes of the learned
which liken Abraham Lincoln to King Henry IV. of France and other
historical notables are far from the mark and reveal their
miscomprehension of the Machiavel redeemed by moral goodness. He
thinks that without the hypocrisy being censurable he was more of the
type of Pope Sixtus the Fifth. This celebrity, who, like Lincoln, was
in the hog business at one time, pretended silliness to be elected
pontiff. The die cast, he stood forth in all his native strength,
keeping the friends who did not try to sway him, and becoming a rod
of steel where he had been rated as lead. [Footnote: Greeley stamped
Lincoln as "the slowest piece of lead that ever crawled."] At the same
time as he dispraised himself--mocked and laughed--he let out glimpses
of true ambition. When his short-sighted advisers warmly crossed his
ground of setting himself with freedom against the pro-slavery party,
assuring him that he would thereby lose the senatorship as against
Douglas, he confessed:

"I am after larger game. The battle of 1860 (for the chair of
Washington) is worth a hundred of this."

* * * * *

"A BOUNTEOUS PRESIDENT--IF ANYTHING IS LEFT!"

"Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the animal standing in doubt
between two stacks of hay and starving to death; the like of that
would never happen to General Cass. Place the stacks a thousand miles
apart; he would stand stock-still, midway between them, and eat both
at once; and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer
some, too, at the same time. By all means, make him President,
gentlemen. He will feed you bounteously--if--if--there is anything
left after he shall have helped himself."--(Speech, House of
Representatives, July 27, 1848.)

* * * * *

THE ART OF BEING PAID TO EAT.

"I have introduced General Cass' accounts here chiefly to show the
wonderful physical capacities of the man. They show that he not only
did the labor of several men at the same time, but that he often did
it at several places many hundred miles apart, at the same time! And
at eating, too, his capacities are shown to be quite as wonderful.
From October, 1821, to May, 1822, he ate ten rations a day in
Michigan, ten a day here in Washington, and near five dollars' worth a
day besides, partly on the road between the two places. And then there
is an important discovery in his example: 'The art of being paid for
what one eats, instead of having to pay for it.' Hereafter, if any
nice man shall owe a bill which he cannot pay, he can just board it
out!"--(Speech, House of Representatives, July 27, 1848.)

(A tilt at a general drawing rations for himself and staff.)

* * * * *

A VICE NOT TO SAY "NO!"

Mr. Lincoln said to General Viele: "If I have got one vice, it is not
being able to say 'No.' And I consider it a vice. Thank God for not
making me a woman! I presume if He had, He would have made me just as
homely as I am, and nobody would have ever tempted me!"

* * * * *

THE BEST CAR!

From his previous sojourn in the capital, President Lincoln had a fund
of good stories upon his predecessors. Among them was the following
tale about President Tyler, one of the weakest chiefs the republic has
ever known, with the exception of Franklin Pierce. Lincoln said that
this President's son "Bob" was sent by his father to arrange about
a special train for an excursion. The railroad agent happened to be
a hard-shell Whig, and having no fear of the great, and wanting no
favor, shrank from allowing him any. He said that the road did not
run any "specials" for Presidents.

"Stop!" interrupted Bob, "did you not furnish a special for
General-President Harrison?" (Died 1841.)

"S'pose we did," answered the superintendent; "well, if you will bring
your father here in that condition, you shall have the best train on
the track!"

* * * * *

SELF-MADE.

"Self-made or never made," says one of the apologists for Lincoln's
ruggedness of character and outward air; at an early political
meeting, when asked if he were self-made and he answered in the
affirmative, the rough critic remarked: "Then it is a poor job," as if
it were by nature's apprentice. But in 1860, when friends reproached
him for the lack of "Old Hickory" Jackson's sternness, he replied
nobly:

"I am just as God made me, and cannot change."

* * * * *

HIS HIGH MIGHTINESS.

The little "court" of the White House wrangling about a fit title for
the Chief, that of "excellency" not being taken as sufficient, one
disputant suggested that the Dutch one of "high mightiness" might fit.
Speaker Mullenberg, at the first Presidency, pronounced on the
question at a dinner where Washington was sitting.

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