“For a minute you could have heard a pin drop and then--well, I just snorted--couldn’t help it. Ma was awful ashamed when I told her, said I oughtin’ to done it--right in meetin’, but I couldn’t help it--just set there and shook and shook. The elder didn’t make any more observations to Mr. Lincoln that trip. “Goin’ home I said, ‘Mr. Lincoln, you just served the elder right, shut him up, and I guess you’re right; you be goin’ to Congress.’ “‘Well, Billy,’ he said, smilin’ and lookin’ serious. ‘I’ve made up my mind that Brother Cartwright ain’t goin’ to make the religion of Jesus Christ a political issue in this District if I can help it.’ “Some of the elder’s friends pretended to think Mr. Lincoln was mockin’ at the Christian religion when he answered back like that. Not a bit. He was protectin’ it accordin’ to my way of thinkin’. “I reckon I understand him a little because I’m more or less that way myself--can’t help seein’ things funny. I’ve done a lot of things Ma says people misunderstand. A while back comin’ home from New York I did somethin’ I expect some people would have called mockin’ at religion; Mr. Lincoln wouldn’t. “You see I’d been down to buy drugs and comin’ home I was readin’ the Bible in the mornin’ in my seat in the sleepin’ car. Allus read a chapter every mornin’, Ma got me in the way of it, and I like it--does me good--keeps me from burstin’ out at somebody when I get mad, that is, it does for the most part. “Well, as I was sayin’, I was readin’ my chapter, and I reckon mebbe I was readin’ out loud when I looked up and see the porter lookin’ at me and kinda snickerin’. “‘See here, boy,’ I says, ‘you smilin’ at the Bible. Well, you set down there. Set down,’ I says. I’m a pretty stout man as you can see, weigh 200, and I reckon I can throw most men my size. Why, I’ve wrestled with Mr. Lincoln, yes, sir, wrestled with Abraham Lincoln, right out there in the alley. You see, I ain’t used to bein’ disobeyed, and that nigger knew it, and he just dropped. “‘Boy,’ I says, ‘I’m goin’ to read you a chapter out of this Bible, and you’re goin’ to listen.’ And I did it. ‘Now,’ I says, ‘down with you on your knees, we’re goin’ to have prayers,’ Well, sir, you never seen such a scared darky. Down he went, and down I went, and I prayed out loud for that porter’s soul and before I was through he was sayin’ ‘Amen.’ “Of course the passengers began to take notice, and about the time I was done along came the conductor, and he lit into me and said he wa’n’t goin’ to have any such performances in his car.