"You see, gentlemen," he began, "in my boyhood days, I had a slim chance for schooling, and did'nt improve what I did have. Occasionally a Yankee would wander into Kentuck, and open a school in the log building that was a church and school house as well, and keep it till he got starved out or heard of a better location. One Fall a bald headed, sour-visaged old man came along and opened the school, and my people concluded I must go; as usual the big boys soon began to test the master, who, though he was a patient Jeffersonian Republican, seemed very tyrannical to us. My good nature singled me out soon, as the scapegoat of the school, and I got more than my share of the birch: at least, my back was as good as an almanac, for every day of the week was recorded there. But, though this record of past time was no pastime to me, I could stand it better than I could the taunts and jibes of the boys out of school. "One morning when a half dozen of us were warming before the broad logwood fire, I noted a big fellow (who had got me flogged the day before) standing on the side opposite, his back to the blaze: both hands were partially open, one laid in the other; some would lay it to the devil, but it was only the spirit of revenge which prompted me to pick up a live coal, covered with ashes, and drop it into his hands. For a moment he did'nt mind it, but it burned all the deeper; when it did burn he jumped and bellowed like a stuck calf. "'Who made that noise?' Demanded old Whitey? the master. "'I made it,' replied the big fellow, rubbing his hands. "'Why?' more angrily demanded old Whitey. "'Some one put a coal of fire in my hand and burnt me,' sniffled the booby. "The big fellow, however, didn't know who did it. Some of the boys, who had a lurking pity for me, said it snapt into his hand; but the master 'couldn't see it;' and at last it leaked out that 'Abe Lincoln done it.' "So you see, gentlemen," said Uncle Abe, moralizing, "I got the blame of a long score of supposititious shortcomings by one act of my own, pretty much as I had to bear the sins of my whole party in the late canvass, because of a few sins of my own." "'Abraham, come up here!' thundered the master, (By the way, gentlemen, my people always called me Abe--my wife still calls me plain Abe--but that old fellow called me _Abraham_ so often and so severely that I early dropped all claim to a definite appellative, and chose to be indefinitely 'A. Lincoln.') * But to go on. I got a deserved threshing that time, and a reputation withal for wickedness that saved all the little rogues in school. At last, however, I determined to be even with old Whitey, somehow.