“Yes, sir, he used to keep things purty well stirred up on that circuit. That time I was a speakin’ of he made Judge Davis real mad; it happened right in court and everybody got to gigglin’ fit to kill. The Judge knew ’twas something Lincoln had said and he began to sputter. “‘I am not going to stand this any longer, Mr. Lincoln, you’re always disturbin’ this court with your tomfoolery. I’m goin’ to fine you. The clerk will fine Mr. Lincoln five dollars for disorderly conduct.’ The boys said Lincoln never said a word; he just set lookin’ down with his hand over his mouth, tryin’ not to laugh. About a minute later the Judge, who was always on pins and needles till he knew all the fun that was goin’ on, called up Weldon and whispered to him, ‘What was that Lincoln said?’ Weldon told him, and I’ll be blamed if the Judge didn’t giggle right out loud there in court. The joke was on him then, and he knew it, and soon as he got his face straight he said, dignified like, ‘The clerk may remit Mr. Lincoln’s fine.’ “Yes, he was a mighty cute story-teller, but he knew what he was about tellin’ ’em. I tell you he got more arguments out of stories than he did out of law books, and the queer part was you couldn’t answer ’em—they just made you see it and you couldn’t get around it. I’m a Democrat, but I’ll be blamed if I didn’t have to vote for Mr. Lincoln as President, couldn’t help it, and it was all on account of that snake story of his’n illustratin’ the takin’ of slavery into Kansas and Nebraska. Remember it? I heard him tell it in a speech once. “‘If I saw a pizen snake crawlin’ in the road,’ he says, ‘I’d kill it with the first thing I could grab; but if I found it in bed with my children, I’d be mighty careful how I touched it fear I’d make it bite the children. If I found it in bed with somebody else’s children I’d let them take care of it; but if I found somebody puttin’ a whole batch of young snakes into an empty bed where mine or anybody’s children was going to sleep pretty soon, I’d stop him from doin’ it if I had to fight him.’ Perhaps he didn’t say ‘fight him,’ but somehow I always tell that story that way because I know I would and so would he or you or anybody. That was what it was all about when you come down to it. They was trying to put a batch of snakes into an empty bed that folks was goin’ to sleep in.