Lincoln's yarns and stories : $b A complete collection of the funny and witty anecdotes that made Lincoln famous as America's greatest story tellerMcClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
History
Lincoln's yarns and stories : $b A complete collection of the funny and witty anecdotes that made Lincoln famous as America's greatest story teller
McClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Anecdotes
“At night, as a rule, the lawyers spent awhile in the parlor, and
permitted the women who happened to be along to sit with them. But after
half an hour or so we would notice it was time for us to leave them. I
remember traveling the circuit one season when the young wife of one of
the lawyers was with him. The place was so crowded that she and I were
made to sleep together. When the time came for banishing us from the
parlor, we went up to our room and sat there till bed-time, listening
to the roars that followed each ether swiftly while those lawyers
down-stairs told stories and laughed till the rafters rang.
“In the morning Mr. Lincoln said to me: ‘Rose, did we disturb your sleep
last night?’ I answered, ‘No, I had no sleep’--which was not entirely
true but the retort amused him. Then the young lawyer’s wife complained
to him that we were not fairly used. We came along with them, young
women, and when they were having the best time we were sent away like
children to go to bed in the dark.
“‘But, Madame,’ said Mr. Lincoln, ‘you would not enjoy the things we
laugh at.’ And then he entered into a discussion on what have been
termed his ‘broad’ stories. He deplored the fact that men seemed to
remember them longer and with less effort than any others.
“My father said: ‘But, Lincoln, I don’t remember the “broad” part of
your stories so much as I do the moral that is in them,’ and it was a
thing in which they were all agreed.”
SORRY FOR THE HORSES.
When President Lincoln heard of the Confederate raid at Fairfax, in
which a brigadier-general and a number of valuable horses were captured,
he gravely observed:
“Well, I am sorry for the horses.”
“Sorry for the horses, Mr. President!” exclaimed the Secretary of
War, raising his spectacles and throwing himself back in his chair in
astonishment.
“Yes,” replied Mr., Lincoln, “I can make a brigadier-general in five
minutes, but it is not easy to replace a hundred and ten horses.”
MILD REBUKE TO A DOCTOR.
Dr. Jerome Walker, of Brooklyn, told how Mr. Lincoln once administered
to him a mild rebuke. The doctor was showing Mr. Lincoln through the
hospital at City Point.
“Finally, after visiting the wards occupied by our invalid and
convalescing soldiers,” said Dr. Walker, “we came to three wards
occupied by sick and wounded Southern prisoners. With a feeling of
patriotic duty, I said: ‘Mr. President, you won’t want to go in there;
they are only rebels.’
“I will never forget how he stopped and gently laid his large hand upon
my shoulder and quietly answered, ‘You mean Confederates!’ And I have
meant Confederates ever since.
“There was nothing left for me to do after the President’s remark but to
go with him through these three wards; and I could not see but that he
was just as kind, his hand-shakings just as hearty, his interest just as
real for the welfare of the men, as when he was among our own soldiers.”
COLD MOLASSES WAS SWIFTER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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