The Lincoln Story Book Part 11

The case looked so formidable--unanswerable, in short--that the State proctor's plea for condemnation might all but be taken for granted.

However highly the prisoner had been elated by his father's friend, his own, having promised to deliver him before sundown, he must have lost the lift-up. For he wore the abandoned expression of one forsaken by his own hopes as by his friends. Norris, in his cell, could have not been more veritably the picture of despair.

Lincoln rose for the final, without eliciting any emotion from him. He dilated on the evidence, which he a.s.serted boldly was proof of a plot against an innocent youth. He called the princ.i.p.al 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 anguis.h.i.+ng embarra.s.sments 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 ident.i.ty, 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 friends.h.i.+p between them. The proof of the friends.h.i.+p 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 fas.h.i.+ons 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 s.h.i.+rt, as he had in the Black Hawk War; coa.r.s.e 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 towns.h.i.+p 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 rea.s.sert 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_.)