The Lincoln Story Book Part 19

PILLS TO PURGE MELANCHOLY.

The Puritanic and cla.s.sically sedate critics blamed the President for finding recreation in reading and hearing comic tales, used to ill.u.s.trate grave texts. He said to a congressman who brought up the censure at a time when the country was profoundly harried:

"Were it not for this occasional vent, I should die!"

"DOWN TO THE RAISINS!"

It was the regular habit of President Lincoln to read the day's telegrams in order in the "flimsy" triplicates. They were kept in a drawer at the White House telegraph-office. As he handled the papers almost solely, each addition would come to be placed on the last lot of the foregoing day. When this was attained, he would say with a sigh:

"There, I have got down to the raisins!"

It was due to the story, which amused him, of the countryman. This tourist entered a fas.h.i.+onable restaurant, and on viewing the long menu, and concluding that all the dishes were for the customer at the fixed price, manfully called for each in turn. When he arrived at the last line, he sighed in relief, and cried:

"Thanks be! I have got down to the raisins!"

GIANT AND GIANT-KILLER.

As Stephen A. Douglas, from his concentrated force and limited height was nicknamed "the Little Giant," his opponent, the elongated Lincoln, was dubbed "the Giant-Killer."

LINCOLN'S "SENTIMENTS" ON A MOOTED POINT.

The President's reply to an autograph fiend who sought his signature, appended to a sentiment, was:

"DEAR MADAM: When you ask a stranger for that which is of interest only to yourself, always enclose a stamp."

CHESTNUTS UNDER A SYCAMORE.

The President, on his way to the Department of War, perceived a gentleman under a tree, sc.r.a.ping among the heaped leaves with his cane. He knew him, a Major Johnson, of the department, an old District of Columbia man who had never been out of the district.

"Good morning, major!" hailed the executive officer. "What in the world are you doing there?"

"Looking for a few horse-chestnuts."

"Eh? Do you expect to find them under a sycamore-tree?" The President laughed freely and pa.s.sed on. He ought to have removed the misguided botanist into the Department of Agriculture, where he might have learned something.

STILL OF LITTLE NOTE.

On hearing that a man had been arrested in Philadelphia for trying to procure $1,500 by a forgery of Lincoln's name, he humorously said: "It is surprising that any man could get the money!"

The secretary pointed out that use might have been made of a signature given to a stranger as an autograph on a blank paper, the body of which had been improperly filled up as a note.

"Well," answered the President, then, as to interfering, "I don't see but that he will have to sit on 'the blister-bench.'"

THE TREE-TOAD AND "TIMOTHEUS."

In the early days when Abraham Lincoln went with his pioneer father to settle in wild Indiana, the chief diversion of the rude inhabitants was from the preaching of the traveling pastors. They were singular devotees whose sincerity redeemed all their flaws of ignorance, illiteracy, and violence. Abraham, with his inherent p.r.o.neness toward imitation of oratory, used to "take them off" to the hilarity of the laboring men who formed his first audiences. Out of his recollections came this tale, which he liked to act out with all the quaint tones and gestures the subject demanded.

The itinerant ranters held out at a schoolhouse near Lincoln's cabin; but in fine weather preferred the academy--as the Platoists would say--what was left of an oak grove, only one tree being spared, making a pulpit with leafy canopy for the exhorter. This man was a Hard-sh.e.l.l Baptist, commonly imperturbable to outside sights and doings when the spirit moved him. His demeanor was rigid and his action angular and restricted. He wore the general attire, c.o.o.nskin cap or beaver hat, hickory-dyed s.h.i.+rt, breeches loose and held up by plugs or makes.h.i.+ft b.u.t.tons, as our ancestors attached undergarments to the upper ones by laces and points. The s.h.i.+rt was held by one b.u.t.ton in the collar.

This dress little mattered, as a leaf screen woven for the occasion hid the lower part of his frame and left the protruding head visible as he leaned forward, standing on a log rolled up for the platform.

He gave out the text, from Corinthians: "Now if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear; for he worketh the work of the law." The following runs: "Let no man despise him," etc.

As he began his speech, a tree-toad that had dropped down out of the tree thought to return to its lookout to see if rain were coming.

As the shortest cut it took the man as a post. Scrambling over his yawning, untanned ankle jack-boots, it slipped under the equally yawning blue jeans. He commenced to scale the leg as the preacher became conscious of the invasion. So, while spooning out the text, he made a grab at the creature, which might be a centipede for all he knew; and then, as it ascended, and his voice ascended a note or two, with the words "be without fear," he slapped still higher. Then, still speaking, but fearsomely animated, he clutched frantically, but always a leetle behindhand, at the unknown monster which now reached the imprisoning neckband. Here he tore at the b.u.t.ton--the divine, not the newt--and broke it free! As he finally yelled--sticking to the sermon as to the hunt, "worketh the work of the law!" an old dame in among the amazed congregation rose, and shrieked out:

"Well, if you represent Timotheus and that is working for the law--then I'm done with the Apostles!"

"IF IT WILL DO THE PRESIDENT GOOD--"

G. H. Stuart, chief of the Christian Commission, was a Bible distributer during the war. The organization had a special soldiers'

Bible called the Cromwell one, whose mixture of warrior and preacher seemed to couple him with Abraham Lincoln. The soldiers usually accepted a copy without pressing, though some said they preferred a cracker. But one man, a Philadelphian, like Stuart himself, rejected the offer. Among the colporteur's arguments, however, was one that overcame him.

"I'll tell you that I commenced my tract distribution at the White House, and the first person I offered one to was Abraham Lincoln. He took it and promised to read it."

"I'll take one," promptly cried the man; "if the President thought it would do _him_ good, it won't hurt me!"