When Mr. Lincoln was grossly and foolishly flattered, as happened once in the case of a gushing “interviewer,” who naïvely put his own punishment into print, he could quiz the flatterer with great ingenuity by apparently falling into the victim’s humour. When only moderately praised, he retorted gently. Once, when a gentleman complimented him on having no vices, such as drinking or smoking, “That is a doubtful compliment,” answered Mr. Lincoln. “I recollect once being outside a stage-coach in Illinois, when a man offered me a cigar. I told him I had no vices. He said nothing, but smoked for some time, and then growled out, ‘It’s my opinion that people who have no vices have plaguy few virtues.’” President Lincoln was not merely obliging or condescending in allowing every one to see him; in his simple Republicanism, he believed that the people who had made him President had a right to talk to him. One day a friend found him half-amused, half-irritated. “You met an old lady as you entered,” he said. “Well, she wanted me to give her an order for stopping the pay of a Treasury clerk who owes her a board-bill of seventy dollars.” His visitor expressed surprise that he did not adopt the usual military plan, under which every application to see the general commanding had to be filtered through a sieve of officers, who allowed no one to take up the chief’s time except those who had business of sufficient importance. “Ah yes,” the President replied, “such things may do very well for you military people, with your arbitrary rule. But the office of a President is a very different one, and the affair is very different. For myself, I feel, though the tax on my time is heavy, that no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again into direct contact with the people. All serves to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprung, and to which, at the end of two years, I must return.” To such an extreme did he carry this, and such weariness did it cause him, that, at the end of four years, he who had been one of the strongest men living, was no longer strong or vigorous. But he always had a good-natured story, even for his tormentors. Once, when a Kentucky farmer wanted him at a critical period of the Emancipation question to exert himself and turn the whole machinery of government to aid him in recovering two slaves, President Lincoln said this reminded him of Jack Chase, the captain of a western steamboat. It is a terrible thing to steer a boat down the roaring rapids, where the mistake of an inch may cause wreck, and it requires the extreme attention of the pilot. One day, when the boat was plunging and wallowing along the boiling current, and Jack at the wheel was using all care to keep in the perilous channel, a boy pulled his coat-tail and cried, “Say, Mister Captain! I wish you’d stop your boat a minute. _I’ve lost my apple overboard._”