"I don't object," said Lincoln, "to being interrupted with sensible questions, but I must say that my boisterous friend does not always make inquiries which properly come under that head. He says he is afflicted with headaches, at which I don't wonder, as it is a well-known fact that nature abhors a vacuum, and takes her own way of demonstrating it. "This noisy friend reminds me of a certain steamboat that used to run on the Illinois River. It was an energetic boat, was always busy. When they built it, however, they made one serious mistake, this error being in the relative sizes of the boiler and the whistle. The latter was usually busy too, and people were aware that it was in existence. "This particular boiler to which I have reference was a six-foot one, and did all that was required of it in the way of pushing the boat along; but as the builders of the vessel had made the whistle a six-foot one, the consequence was that every time the whistle blew the boat had to stop." =RAN AWAY WHEN VICTORIOUS= Three or four days after the battle of Bull Run, some gentlemen who had been on the field called upon the President. He inquired very minutely regarding all the circumstances of the affair, and, after listening with the utmost attention, said, with a touch of humor: "So it is your notion that we whipped the rebels and then ran away from them!" =HE "SKEWED" THE LINE= When a surveyor, Mr. Lincoln first platted the town of Petersburg, Ill. Some twenty or thirty years afterward the property-owners along one of the outlying streets had trouble in fixing their boundaries. They consulted the official plat and got no relief. A committee was sent to Springfield to consult the distinguished surveyor, but he failed to recall anything that would give them aid, and could only refer them to the record. The dispute therefore went into the courts. While the trial was pending, an old Irishman named McGuire, who had worked for some farmer during the summer, returned to town for the winter. The case being mentioned in his presence, he promptly said: "I can tell you all about it. I helped carry the chain when Abe Lincoln laid out this town. Over there where they are quarreling about the lines, when he was locating the street, he straightened up from his instrument and said: 'If I run that street right through, it will cut three or four feet off the end of ----'s house. It's all he's got in the world and he could never get another. I reckon it won't hurt anything out here if I skew the line a little and miss him.'" The line was "skewed," and hence the trouble, and more testimony furnished as to Lincoln's abounding kindness of heart, that would not willingly harm any human being. ="HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF THIS PLACE?"=