not only with serious business, but with almost tragic incidents, was very peculiar. Once a poor old man from Tennessee called to beg for the life of his son, who was under sentence of death for desertion. He showed his papers, and the President, taking them kindly, said he would examine them, and answer the applicant the next day. The old man, in an agony of anxiety, with tears streaming, cried, “To-morrow may be too late! My son is under sentence of death. _It must be done now, or not at all._” The President looked sympathetically into the old man’s face, took him by the hands, and pensively said, “_That_ puts me in mind of a little story. Wait a bit--I’ll tell it.” “Once General Fisk of Missouri was a Colonel, and he despised swearing. When he raised his regiment in Missouri, he proposed to his men that he should do all the profanity in it. They agreed, and for a long time not a solitary swear was heard among them. But there was an old teamster named John Todd, who, one day when driving his mules over a very bad road, and finding them unusually obstinate, could not restrain himself, and burst into a tremendous display of ground and lofty swearing. This was overheard by the Colonel, who at once brought John to book. ‘Didn’t you promise,’ he said, indignantly, ‘that I was to do all the swearing of the regiment?’ ‘Yes, I did, Colonel,’ he replied; ‘but the truth is, the swearing had to be done then, or not at all--and you weren’t there to do it.’ Well,” concluded Mr. Lincoln, as he took up a pen, “it seems that this pardon has to be done now, or not at all, like Todd’s swearing; and, for fear of a mistake,” he added, with a kindly twinkle in his eye, “I guess we’ll do it at once.” Saying this, he wrote a few lines, which caused the old man to shed more tears when he read them, for the paper held the pardon of his son. Once, and once only, was President Lincoln known to sternly and promptly refuse mercy. This was to a man who had been a slave-trader, and who, after his term of imprisonment had expired, was still kept in jail for a fine of 1000 dollars. He fully acknowledged his guilt, and was very touching in his appeal on paper, but Lincoln was unmoved. “I could forgive the foulest murder for such an appeal,” he said, “for it is my weakness to be too easily moved by appeals for mercy; but the man who could go to Africa, and rob her of her children, and sell them into endless bondage, with no other motive than that of getting dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer, that he can never receive pardon at my hands. No; he may rot in jail before he shall have liberty by any act of mine.” On one occasion, when a foolish young fellow was condemned to death for not joining his regiment, his friends went with a pardon, which they begged the President to sign. They found him before a table, of which every inch was deeply covered with papers. Mr. Lincoln listened to their request, and proceeded to another table,