Unconsciously, Abraham Lincoln became a great proverbialist. Scores of his pithy sayings are current among the people. “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free,” is the sum-total of all the policy which urged Emancipation for the sake of the white man. “This struggle of to-day is for a vast future also,” expressed a great popular opinion. “We are making history rapidly,” was very flattering to all who shared in the war. “If slavery is not wrong, _nothing_ is wrong,” spoke the very extreme of conviction. The whole people took his witty caution “not to swap horses in the middle of a stream.” When it was always urged by the Democrats that emancipation implied amalgamation, he answered--“I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife.” This popular Democratic shibboleth, “How would you like your daughter to marry a negro?” was keenly satirised by Nasby. I have myself known a Democratic procession in Philadelphia to contain a car with a parcel of girls dressed in white, and the motto, “Fathers, protect us from Black Husbands.” To which the Republican banner simply replied, “_Our_ Daughters do not want to marry Black Husbands.” Abraham Lincoln was always moderate in argument. Once, when Judge Douglas attempted to parry an argument by impeaching the veracity of a senator whom Mr. Lincoln had quoted, he answered that the question was not one of veracity, but simply one of argument. He said--“Euclid, by a course of reasoning, proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles; now, would you undertake to disprove that assertion by calling Euclid a liar?” “I never did invent anything original--I am only a _retail dealer_,” is very characteristic of Mr. Lincoln. He was speaking of the stories credited to him, and yet the modesty of the remark, coupled with the droll distinction between original wholesale manufacturers and retail dealers, is both original and quaint. Mr. Lincoln was very ingenious in finding reasons for being merciful. On one occasion, a young soldier who had shown himself very brave in war, and had been severely wounded, after a time deserted. Being re-captured, he was under sentence of death, and President Lincoln was of course petitioned for his pardon. It was a difficult case; the young man deserved to die, and desertion was sadly injuring the army. The President mused solemnly, until a happy thought struck him. “Did you say he was once badly wounded?” he asked of the applicant for a pardon. “He was.” “Then, as the Scripture says that in the shedding of blood is the remission of sins, I guess we’ll have to let him off this time.”