The Lincoln Story Book Part 15

THE RELIGION OF FEELING.

Lincoln told a friend that he heard a man named Glenn say at an Indiana church-meeting:

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad; that is my religion!"

THE TWO PRAYERS.

In Lincoln's inaugural address will be found the pa.s.sage about the sad singularity of the two contendants in the fratricidal combat being Christians alike: "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same G.o.d." The example is forthcoming. There is plenty of evidence that the speaker always "took counsel of G.o.d." His words are: "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go." [Footnote: No longer was Lincoln's piety held as hypocrisy, as in 1860, when a campaign song sneers at

How each night he seeks the closet, There, alone, to kneel and pray.]

(Connect with the Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee's avowal: "I have never seen the day when I did not pray for the people of the North.")

"Everybody thinks better than anybody."--(Lincoln.) (This is also ascribed to Talleyrand. "It is only the rich who are robbed.")

"WE SHALL SEE OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN!"

For weeks after the death of his son Willie the inconsolable father mourned in particular on that day in each week, and even the military sights at Fortress Monroe to court a change failed to distract him.

He was studying Shakespeare. Calling his private secretary to him, he read several pa.s.sages, and finally that of Queen Constance's lament over her lost child:

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see, and know, our friends in heaven.

(_King John, III., 4._)

"If that be true, I shall see my boy again!" He said:

"Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness that it was not reality? Just so I dream of my boy Willie!"

(Colonel Lamon, the presidential body-guard-in-chief, was the recipient of this spiritual confidence.)

MORE PRAYING AND LESS SWEARING!

On accompanying Mrs. Pomeroy, military nurse, to her hospital, the President discovered that the authorities of the house had forbidden praying to the patients, or even reading the Bible to them, as it was denominational. He promptly removed the restriction, and furthered the visiting missionaries in holding prayer-meetings, read the Scriptures to "his boys in blue," and pray with them as much as they pleased.

"If there was more praying," he said, "and less swearing, it would be far better for our country."

GLOVES OR NO GLOVES.

An old acquaintance of the President's visited him at Was.h.i.+ngton. Each man's wife insisted on the gentleman, her lord, donning gloves. For they were going as a square party out in the presidential carriage, and the Was.h.i.+ngtonians would not accept a king as such unless he dressed as a king. Mr. Lincoln, as a shrewd politician, and married man, put his gloves in his pocket, not to don them until there was no wriggling out of the fix; the other one had his on at the hotel where the carriage came to take that couple up.

They went out and took seats in the vehicle, whereupon the newcomer, seeing that his host was ungloved, went on the rule of leaving the fence bars as you find them. He set to drawing off his kids at the same time as Mr. Lincoln commenced to tug at his to get them on.

"No, no, no!" protested the caller, fetching away his kids, one at a time, "it is none of my doings! Put up your mittens, Lincoln!"

And so they had their ride out without their hands being in guards.

THE USE OF BOOKS.

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new, after all."--(By an Illinois clergyman, knowing Lincoln in the 'Fifties.)

LINCOLN'S BOOK CRITICISM.

"For those who like this kind of book, this is the kind of book they will like."--(New York _Times Book Review_, July 7, 1901.)

THE HAND-TO-HAND ENCOUNTER.

Toward the evident close of the struggle an English n.o.bleman came to Was.h.i.+ngton, credited to the emba.s.sy. This was somewhat impudent and imprudent of him, too, as, in early times, he was prominent among the British aristocrats who had supported the Confederate States. He had a.s.sisted in their being declared belligerents--a sore point. He had invested in the "Cotton Loan," and voted in sustenance of the Lairds getting the rebel pirates out of the Mersey. Altogether, he must have attended the regular White House reception from thinking his hostility was unrecorded. But the President was clearly prepared for the _fox-paw_! He spoke to the Briton smoothly enough, but when the unsuspecting hand was placed in his grasp he gave it one of those natural and not formal grips which left an impression on him forever.

The balladist's line was realized for him: "It is _hard_ to give the hand where the heart can never be."

BETTER SOMETIMES RIGHT THAN ALL TIMES WRONG.

In 1832, when candidate for the Illinois legislative chambers, Lincoln said he held it "a sound maxim better only sometimes to be right than at all times wrong."