''Abe'' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories - Alexander Kelly McClure (best android ereader TXT) 📗

“My Dear Little Miss: Your very agreeable letter of the fifteenth is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter. I have three sons; one seventeen, one nine and one seven years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I should begin it now? Your very sincere well-wisher, A. LINCOLN.”

When on the journey to Washington to be inaugurated, Lincoln’s train stopped at Westfield. He recollected his little correspondent and spoke of her to ex-Lieutenant Governor George W. Patterson, who called out and asked if Grace Bedell was present.

There was a large surging mass of people gathered about the train, but Grace was discovered at a distance; the crowd opened a pathway to the coach, and she came, timidly but gladly, to the President-elect, who told her that she might see that he had allowed his whiskers to grow at her request. Then, reaching out his long arms, he drew her up to him and kissed her. The act drew an enthusiastic demonstration of approval from the multitude.

Grace married a Kansas banker, and became Grace Bedell Billings.

LINCOLN AS A DANCER.

Lincoln made his first appearance in society when he was first sent to Springfield, Ill., as a member of the State Legislature. It was not an imposing figure which he cut in a ballroom, but still he was occasionally to be found there. Miss Mary Todd, who afterward became his wife, was the magnet which drew the tall, awkward young man from his den. One evening Lincoln approached Miss Todd, and said, in his peculiar idiom:

“Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you the worst way.” The young woman accepted the inevitable, and hobbled around the room with him. When she returned to her seat, one of her companions asked mischievously:

“Well, Mary, did he dance with you the worst way.”

“Yes,” she answered, “the very worst.”

SIMPLY PRACTICAL HUMANITY.

An instance of young Lincoln’s practical humanity at an early period of his life is recorded in this way:

One evening, while returning from a “raising” in his wide neighborhood, with a number of companions, he discovered a stray horse, with saddle and bridle upon him. The horse was recognized as belonging to a man who was accustomed to get drunk, and it was suspected at once that he was not far off. A short search only was necessary to confirm the belief.

The poor drunkard was found in a perfectly helpless condition, upon the chilly ground. Abraham’s companions urged the cowardly policy of leaving him to his fate, but young Lincoln would not hear to the proposition.

At his request, the miserable sot was lifted on his shoulders, and he actually carried him eighty rods to the nearest house.

Sending word to his father that he should not be back that night, with the reason for his absence, he attended and nursed the man until the morning, and had the pleasure of believing that he had saved his life.

HAPPY FIGURES OF SPEECH.

On one occasion, exasperated at the discrepancy between the aggregate of troops forwarded to McClellan and the number that same general reported as having received, Lincoln exclaimed: “Sending men to that army is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard—half of them never get there.”

To a politician who had criticised his course, he wrote: “Would you have me drop the War where it is, or would you prosecute it in future with elder stalk squirts charged with rosewater?”

When, on his first arrival in Washington as President, he found himself besieged by office-seekers, while the War was breaking out, he said: “I feel like a man letting lodgings at one end of his house while the other end is on fire.”

A FEW “RHYTHMIC SHOTS.”

Ward Lamon, Marshal of the District of Columbia during Lincoln’s time in Washington, accompanied the President everywhere. He was a good singer, and, when Lincoln was in one of his melancholy moods, would “fire a few rhythmic shots” at the President to cheer the latter. Lincoln keenly relished nonsense in the shape of witty or comic ditties. A parody of “A Life on the Ocean Wave” was always pleasing to him:

“Oh, a life on the ocean wave, And a home on the rolling deep! With ratlins fried three times a day And a leaky old berth for to sleep; Where the gray-beard cockroach roams, On thoughts of kind intent, And the raving bedbug comes The road the cockroach went.”

Lincoln could not control his laughter when he heard songs of this sort.

He was fond of negro melodies, too, and “The Blue-Tailed Fly” was a great favorite with him. He often called for that buzzing ballad when he and Lamon were alone, and he wanted to throw off the weight of public and private cares. The ballad of “The Blue-Tailed Fly” contained two verses, which ran:

“When I was young I used to wait At massa’s table, ‘n’ hand de plate, An’ pass de bottle when he was dry, An’ brush away de blue-tailed fly.

“Ol’ Massa’s dead; oh, let him rest! Dey say all things am for de best; But I can’t forget until I die Ol’ massa an’ de blue-tailed fly.”

While humorous songs delighted the President, he also loved to listen to patriotic airs and ballads containing sentiment. He was fond of hearing “The Sword of Bunker Hill,” “Ben Bolt,” and “The Lament of the Irish Emigrant.” His preference of the verses in the latter was this:

“I’m lonely now, Mary, For the poor make no new friends; But, oh, they love the better still The few our Father sends! And you were all I had, Mary, My blessing and my pride; There’s nothing left to care for now, Since my poor Mary died.”

Those who knew Lincoln were well aware he was incapable of so monstrous an act as that of wantonly insulting the dead, as was charged in the infamous libel which asserted that he listened to a comic song on the field of Antietam, before the dead were buried.

OLD MAN GLENN’S RELIGION.

Mr. Lincoln once remarked to a friend that his religion was like that of an old man named Glenn, in Indiana, whom he heard speak at a church meeting, and who said: “When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad; and that’s my religion.”

Mrs. Lincoln herself has said that Mr. Lincoln had no faith—no faith, in the usual acceptance of those words. “He never joined a church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature. He first seemed to think about the subject when our boy Willie died, and then more than ever about the time he went to Gettysburg; but it was a kind of poetry in his nature, and he never was a technical Christian.”

LAST ACTS OF MERCY.

During the afternoon preceding his assassination the President signed a pardon for a soldier sentenced to be shot for desertion, remarking as he did so, “Well, I think the boy can do us more good above ground than under ground.”

He also approved an application for the discharge, on taking the oath of allegiance, of a rebel prisoner, in whose petition he wrote, “Let it be done.”

This act of mercy was his last official order.

JUST LIKE SEWARD.

The first corps of the army commanded by General Reynolds was once reviewed by the President on a beautiful plain at the north of Potomac Creek, about eight miles from Hooker’s headquarters. The party rode thither in an ambulance over a rough corduroy road, and as they passed over some of the more difficult portions of the jolting way the ambulance driver, who sat well in front, occasionally let fly a volley of suppressed oaths at his wild team of six mules.

Finally, Mr. Lincoln, leaning forward, touched the man on the shoulder and said,

“Excuse me, my friend, are you an Episcopalian?”

The man, greatly startled, looked around and replied:

“No, Mr. President; I am a Methodist.”

“Well,” said Lincoln, “I thought you must be an Episcopalian, because you swear just like Governor Seward, who is a church warder.”

A CHEERFUL PROSPECT.

The first night after the departure of President-elect Lincoln from Springfield, on his way to Washington, was spent in Indianapolis. Governor Yates, O. H. Browning, Jesse K. Dubois, O. M. Hatch, Josiah Allen, of Indiana, and others, after taking leave of Mr. Lincoln to return to their respective homes, took Ward Lamon into a room, locked the door, and proceeded in the most solemn and impressive manner to instruct him as to his duties as the special guardian of Mr. Lincoln’s person during the rest of his journey to Washington. Lamon tells the story as follows:

“The lesson was concluded by Uncle Jesse, as Mr. Dubois was commonly, called, who said:

“‘Now, Lamon, we have regarded you as the Tom Hyer of Illinois, with Morrissey attachment. We intrust the sacred life of Mr. Lincoln to your keeping; and if you don’t protect it, never return to Illinois, for we will murder you on sight.”’

THOUGHT GOD WOULD HAVE TOLD HIM.

Professor Jonathan Baldwin Turner was one of the few men to whom Mr. Lincoln confided his intention to issue the Proclamation of Emancipation.

Mr. Lincoln told his Illinois friend of the visit of a delegation to him who claimed to have a message from God that the War would not be successful without the freeing of the negroes, to whom Mr. Lincoln replied: “Is it not a little strange that He should tell this to you, who have so little to do with it, and should not have told me, who has a great deal to do with it?”

At the same time he informed Professor Turner he had his Proclamation in his pocket.

LINCOLN AND A BIBLE HERO.

A writer who heard Mr. Lincoln’s famous speech delivered in New York after his nomination for President has left this record of the event:

“When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He was tall, tall, oh, so tall, and so angular and awkward that I had for an instant a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man. He began in a low tone of voice, as if he were used to speaking out of doors and was afraid of speaking too loud.

“He said ‘Mr. Cheerman,’ instead of ‘Mr. Chairman,’ and employed many other words with an old-fashioned pronunciation. I said to myself, ‘Old fellow, you won’t do; it is all very well for the Wild West, but this will never go down in New York.’ But pretty soon he began to get into the subject; he straightened up, made regular and graceful gestures; his face lighted as with an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured.

“I forgot the clothing, his personal appearance, and his individual peculiarities. Presently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet with the rest, yelling like a wild Indian, cheering the wonderful man. In the close parts of his argument you could hear the gentle sizzling of the gas burners.

“When he reached a climax the thunders of applause were terrific. It was a great speech. When I came out of the hall my face was glowing with excitement and my frame all a-quiver. A friend, with his eyes aglow, asked me what I thought of ‘Abe’ Lincoln, the rail-splitter. I said, ‘He’s the greatest man since St. Paul.’ And I think so yet.”

BOY WAS CARED FOR.

President Lincoln one day noticed a small, pale, delicate-looking boy, about thirteen years old, among the number in the White House antechamber.

The President saw him standing there, looking so feeble and faint, and said: “Come