The life and public services of Abraham Lincoln ... together with his state papers, including his speeches, addresses, messages, letters, and proclamations, and the closing scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J. Raymond. To which are added anecdotes and personal reminiscences of President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter.

720

THE LIFE, PUBLIC SERVICES, AND

must commend themselves to the approval of all candid
minds.
Much has been said of Mr. Lincolnls habit of telling
stories, and it could scarcely be exaggerated. He had a
keen sense of the humorous and the ludicrous, and relished jokes and anecdotes for the amusement they afforded him. But story-telling was with him rather a mode
of stating and illustrating facts and opinions, than any
thing else. There is a great difference among men in the
manner of expressing their thoughts. Some are rigidly
exact, and give every thing they say a logical form.
Others express themselves in figures, and by illustrations
drawn from nature or history. Mr. Lincoln often gave
clearness and force to his ideas by pertinent anecdotes
and illustrations drawn from daily life. Within a month
after his first accession to office, when the South was
threatening civil war, and armies of office-seekers were
besieging him in the Executive Mansion, he said to the
writer of these pages that he wished he could get time to
attend to the Southern question; he thought he knew
what was wanted, and believed he could do something
towards quieting the rising discontent; but the officeseekers demanded all his time. "I am," said he, "like
a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house,
that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the
other." Two or three years later, when the people had
made him a candidate for re-election, the same friend
spoke to him of a member of his cabinet who was a candidate also. Mr. Lincoln said he did not much concern
himself about that. It was very important to him and
the country that the department over which his rival
presided should be administered with vigor and energy,
and whatever would stimulate the Searetary to such
action would do good. "R —," said he, "you were
brought up oh a farm, were you not? Then you know
what a chin-fly is. My brother and I," he added, "were
once ploughing corn on a Kentucky farm, I driving the
horse and he holding plough. The horse was lazy, but
on one occasion rushed across the field so that I, with my