"Have you not seen Sheridan?" The answer was in the negative. "Then I will tell you just what kind of a chap he is: One of those _long_-armed fellows, with _short_ legs, that can scratch their shins without having to stoop over to do it!" * * * * * STRUCK BY THE DEAD HAND. Edwin Booth, the tragedian, brother of the regicide Wilkes, was at a friend's house. By the purest chance, dallying over the knickknacks, he picked up a plaster-cast of a hand. It was something more than a paper-weight, he was intuitively prompted, for he said, handling it reverently as Yorick's relict: "By the way, whose is this?" Before the cue could be given to hush or utter a subterfuge, some one blurted out: "Abraham Lincoln's! Don't you know?" "The murder was out!" and the distinguished guest, who suffered a long term for a crime wholly out of his ken, was silent for the evening.--(W. D. Howells.) * * * * * THIS CLINCHES IT. A party accompanying the President to the ground to see experiments with new ordnance in the Navy Yard, in 1862, were diverted by his taking up a ship-carpenter's ax from its nick in a spar, and holding it out by the end of the handle; a feat that none of the group could imitate. He said that he had enough of the Dahlgreens, Columbiads, and Raphael repeaters--and that this was an American institution, which, "I guess, I understand better than all other weapons!" * * * * * LINCOLN'S FIRST LOVE-STORY. In 1833, when Abraham was just over twenty, he fell in love with Anne, or Annie Rutledge, at New Salem. Her father kept the tavern where Lincoln boarded. But the girl was engaged to a dry-goods merchant, named McNeil. This man, pretending to be of a high old Irish family, likely to discountenance union to a publican's daughter, shilly-shallied, but finally went East to get his folks' consent. He acknowledged that he was parading under borrowed plumes, as he was a McNamara in reality. He stayed away so long that the maid-forlorn gave him up and listened to other suitors. Lincoln proposed, but waited till the apparent jilt was heard from. Then they were espoused. But a block to the match came in Lincoln having no position. Awaiting his efforts as a law student, the wedding was postponed; but, meanwhile, death came quick where fortune lagged. She died and left her lover broken-hearted. He seems then to have been smitten with the brown study afflicting him all his life, and by some, like Secretary Boutwell, affirmed to be independent of the surrounding grounds for depression and grief. Fears of suicide led his friends to watch him closely; and he was known to go and lie on the grave of the maid, whose name he said would dwell ever with him, while his heart was buried with her. The rival, McNamara, returned too late to redeem his vow, but lived in the same State many years, "a prosperous gentleman." * * * * *