''Abe'' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories by Alexander Kelly McClure (books to read for 13 year olds TXT) 📖

“‘May I ask,’ said the Secretary, ‘what is to be the subject of your lectures?’

“‘Certainly,’ was the reply, with a very solemn expression of countenance. ‘The course I wish to deliver is on the Second Coming of our Lord.’

“‘It is of no use,’ said C.; ‘if you will take my advice, you will not waste your time in this city. It is my private opinion that, if the Lord has been in Springfield once, He will never come the second time!’”

HOW HE WON A FRIEND.

J. S. Moulton, of Chicago, a master in chancery and influential in public affairs, looked upon the candidacy of Mr. Lincoln for President as something in the nature of a joke. He did not rate the Illinois man in the same class with the giants of the East. In fact he had expressed himself as by no means friendly to the Lincoln cause.

Still he had been a good friend to Lincoln and had often met him when the Springfield lawyer came to Chicago. Mr. Lincoln heard of Moulton’s attitude, but did not see Moulton until after the election, when the President-elect came to Chicago and was tendered a reception at one of the big hotels.

Moulton went up in the line to pay his respects to the newly-elected chief magistrate, purely as a formality, he explained to his companions. As Moulton came along the line Mr. Lincoln grasped Moulton’s hand with his right, and with his left took the master of chancery by the shoulder and pulled him out of the line.

“You don’t belong in that line, Moulton,” said Mr. Lincoln. “You belong here by me.”

Everyone at the reception was a witness to the honoring of Moulton. From that hour every faculty that Moulton possessed was at the service of the President. A little act of kindness, skillfully bestowed, had won him; and he stayed on to the end.

NEVER SUED A CLIENT.

If a client did not pay, Lincoln did not believe in suing for the fee. When a fee was paid him his custom was to divide the money into two equal parts, put one part into his pocket, and the other into an envelope labeled “Herndon’s share.”

THE LINCOLN HOUSEHOLD GOODS.

It is recorded that when “Abe” was born, the household goods of his father consisted of a few cooking utensils, a little bedding, some carpenter tools, and four hundred gallons of the fierce product of the mountain still.

RUNNING THE MACHINE.

One of the cartoon-posters issued by the Democratic National Campaign Committee in the fall of 1864 is given here. It had the legend, “Running the Machine,” printed beneath; the “machine” was Secretary Chase’s “Greenback Mill,” and the mill was turning out paper money by the million to satisfy the demands of greedy contractors. “Uncle Abe” is pictured as about to tell one of his funny stories, of which the scene “reminds” him; Secretary of War Stanton is receiving a message from the front, describing a great victory, in which one prisoner and one gun were taken; Secretary of State Seward is handing an order to a messenger for the arrest of a man who had called him a “humbug,” the habeas corpus being suspended throughout the Union at that period; Secretary of the Navy Welles—the long-haired, long-bearded man at the head of the table—is figuring out a naval problem; at the side of the table, opposite “Uncle Abe,” are seated two Government contractors, shouting for “more greenbacks,” and at the extreme left is Secretary of the Treasury Fessenden (who succeeded Chase when the latter was made Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court), who complains that he cannot satisfy the greed of the contractors for “more greenbacks,” although he is grinding away at the mill day and night.

WAS “BOSS” WHEN NECESSARY.

Lincoln was the actual head of the administration, and whenever he chose to do so he controlled Secretary of War Stanton as well as the other Cabinet ministers.

Secretary Stanton on one occasion said: “Now, Mr. President, those are the facts and you must see that your order cannot be executed.”

Lincoln replied in a somewhat positive tone: “Mr. Secretary, I reckon you’ll have to execute the order.”

Stanton replied with vigor: “Mr. President, I cannot do it. This order is an improper one, and I cannot execute it.”

Lincoln fixed his eyes upon Stanton, and, in a firm voice and accent that clearly showed his determination, said: “Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done.”

It was done.

“RATHER STARVE THAN SWINDLE.”

Ward Lamon, once Lincoln’s law partner, relates a story which places Lincoln’s high sense of honor in a prominent light. In a certain case, Lincoln and Lamon being retained by a gentleman named Scott, Lamon put the fee at $250, and Scott agreed to pay it. Says Lamon:

“Scott expected a contest, but, to his surprise, the case was tried inside of twenty minutes; our success was complete. Scott was satisfied, and cheerfully paid over the money to me inside the bar, Lincoln looking on. Scott then went out, and Lincoln asked, ‘What did you charge that man?’

“I told him $250. Said he: ‘Lamon, that is all wrong. The service was not worth that sum. Give him back at least half of it.’

“I protested that the fee was fixed in advance; that Scott was perfectly satisfied, and had so expressed himself. ‘That may be,’ retorted Lincoln, with a look of distress and of undisguised displeasure, ‘but I am not satisfied. This is positively wrong. Go, call him back and return half the money at least, or I will not receive one cent of it for my share.’

“I did go, and Scott was astonished when I handed back half the fee.

“This conversation had attracted the attention of the lawyers and the court. Judge David Davis, then on our circuit bench (afterwards Associate Justice on the United States Supreme bench), called Lincoln to him. The Judge never could whisper, but in this instance he probably did his best. At all events, in attempting to whisper to Lincoln he trumpeted his rebuke in about these words, and in rasping tones that could be heard all over the court-room: ‘Lincoln, I have been watching you and Lamon. You are impoverishing this bar by your picayune charges of fees, and the lawyers have reason to complain of you. You are now almost as poor as Lazarus, and if you don’t make people pay you more for your services you will die as poor as Job’s turkey!’

“Judge O. L. Davis, the leading lawyer in that part of the State, promptly applauded this malediction from the bench; but Lincoln was immovable.

“‘That money,’ said he, ‘comes out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl, and I would rather starve than swindle her in this manner.’”

DON’T AIM TOO HIGH.

“Billy, don’t shoot too high—aim lower, and the common people will understand you,” Lincoln once said to a brother lawyer.

“They are the ones you want to reach—at least, they are the ones you ought to reach.

“The educated and refined people will understand you, anyway. If you aim too high, your idea will go over the heads of the masses, and only hit those who need no hitting.”

NOT MUCH AT RAIL-SPLITTING.

One who afterward became one of Lincoln’s most devoted friends and adherents tells this story regarding the manner in which Lincoln received him when they met for the first time:

“After a comical survey of my fashionable toggery,—my swallow-tail coat, white neck-cloth, and ruffled shirt (an astonishing outfit for a young limb of the law in that settlement), Lincoln said:

“‘Going to try your hand at the law, are you? I should know at a glance that you were a Virginian; but I don’t think you would succeed at splitting rails. That was my occupation at your age, and I don’t think I have taken as much pleasure in anything else from that day to this.’”

GAVE THE SOLDIER THE PREFERENCE.

July 27th, 1863, Lincoln wrote the Postmaster-General:

“Yesterday little indorsements of mine went to you in two cases of postmasterships, sought for widows whose husbands have fallen in the battles of this war.

“These cases, occurring on the same day, brought me to reflect more attentively than what I had before done as to what is fairly due from us here in dispensing of patronage toward the men who, by fighting our battles, bear the chief burden of saving our country.

“My conclusion is that, other claims and qualifications being equal, they have the right, and this is especially applicable to the disabled soldier and the deceased soldier’s family.”

THE PRESIDENT WAS NOT SCARED.

When told how uneasy all had been at his going to Richmond, Lincoln replied:

“Why, if any one else had been President and had gone to Richmond, I would have been alarmed; but I was not scared about myself a bit.”

JEFF. DAVIS’ REPLY TO LINCOLN.

On the 20th of July, 1864, Horace Greeley crossed into Canada to confer with refugee rebels at Niagara. He bore with him this paper from the President:

“To Whom It May Concern: Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war with the United States, will be received and considered by the executive government of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms and other substantial and collateral points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe conduct both ways.”

To this Jefferson Davis replied: “We are not fighting for slavery; we are fighting for independence.”

LINCOLN WAS a GENTLEMAN.

Lincoln was compelled to contend with the results of the ill-judged zeal of politicians, who forced ahead his flatboat and rail-splitting record, with the homely surroundings of his earlier days, and thus, obscured for the time, the other fact that, always having the heart, he had long since acquired the manners of a true gentleman.

So, too, did he suffer from Eastern censors, who did not take those surroundings into account, and allowed nothing for his originality of character. One of these critics heard at Washington that Mr. Lincoln, in speaking at different times of some move or thing, said “it had petered out;” that some other one’s plan “wouldn’t gibe;” and being asked if the War and the cause of the Union were not a great care to him, replied:

“Yes, it is a heavy hog to hold.”

The first two phrases are so familiar here in the West that they need no explanation. Of the last and more pioneer one it may be said that it had a special force, and was peculiarly Lincoln-like in the way applied by him.

In the early times in Illinois, those having hogs, did their own killing, assisted by their neighbors. Stripped of its hair, one held the carcass nearly perpendicular in the air, head down, while others put one point of the gambrel-bar through a slit in its hock, then over the string-pole, and the other point through the other hock, and so swung the animal clear of the ground. While all this was being done, it took a good man to “hold the hog,” greasy, warmly moist, and weighing some two hundred pounds. And often those with the gambrel prolonged the strain, being provokingly slow, in hopes to make the holder drop his burden.

This latter thought is again expressed where President Lincoln, writing of the peace which he hoped would “come soon, to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time,” added that while there would “be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue and clenched