The President's reply to an autograph fiend who sought his signature, appended to a sentiment, was: "DEAR MADAM: When you ask a stranger for that which is of interest only to yourself, always enclose a stamp." * * * * * CHESTNUTS UNDER A SYCAMORE. The President, on his way to the Department of War, perceived a gentleman under a tree, scraping among the heaped leaves with his cane. He knew him, a Major Johnson, of the department, an old District of Columbia man who had never been out of the district. "Good morning, major!" hailed the executive officer. "What in the world are you doing there?" "Looking for a few horse-chestnuts." "Eh? Do you expect to find them under a sycamore-tree?" The President laughed freely and passed on. He ought to have removed the misguided botanist into the Department of Agriculture, where he might have learned something. * * * * * STILL OF LITTLE NOTE. On hearing that a man had been arrested in Philadelphia for trying to procure $1,500 by a forgery of Lincoln's name, he humorously said: "It is surprising that any man could get the money!" The secretary pointed out that use might have been made of a signature given to a stranger as an autograph on a blank paper, the body of which had been improperly filled up as a note. "Well," answered the President, then, as to interfering, "I don't see but that he will have to sit on 'the blister-bench.'" * * * * * THE TREE-TOAD AND "TIMOTHEUS." In the early days when Abraham Lincoln went with his pioneer father to settle in wild Indiana, the chief diversion of the rude inhabitants was from the preaching of the traveling pastors. They were singular devotees whose sincerity redeemed all their flaws of ignorance, illiteracy, and violence. Abraham, with his inherent proneness toward imitation of oratory, used to "take them off" to the hilarity of the laboring men who formed his first audiences. Out of his recollections came this tale, which he liked to act out with all the quaint tones and gestures the subject demanded. The itinerant ranters held out at a schoolhouse near Lincoln's cabin; but in fine weather preferred the academy--as the Platoists would say--what was left of an oak grove, only one tree being spared, making a pulpit with leafy canopy for the exhorter. This man was a Hard-shell Baptist, commonly imperturbable to outside sights and doings when the spirit moved him. His demeanor was rigid and his action angular and restricted. He wore the general attire, coonskin cap or beaver hat, hickory-dyed shirt, breeches loose and held up by plugs or makeshift buttons, as our ancestors attached undergarments to the upper ones by laces and points. The shirt was held by one button in the collar.