Part 20

“Oh!” replied Mr. Lincoln, with a characteristic twinkle of the eye, “he is intrenching!”

MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF IT, ANYWAY.

From the day of his nomination by the Chicago convention, gifts poured in upon Lincoln. Many of these came in the form of wearing apparel. Mr. George Lincoln, of Brooklyn, who brought to Springfield, in January, 1861, a handsome silk hat to the President-elect, the gift of a New York hatter, told some friends that in receiving the hat Lincoln laughed heartily over the gifts of clothing, and remarked to Mrs. Lincoln: “Well, wife, if nothing else comes out of this scrape, we are going to have some new clothes, are we not?”

VICIOUS OXEN HAVE SHORT HORNS.

In speaking of the many mean and petty acts of certain members of Congress, the President, while talking on the subject one day with friends, said:

“I have great sympathy for these men, because of their temper and their weakness; but I am thankful that the good Lord has given to the vicious ox short horns, for if their physical courage were equal to their vicious disposition, some of us in this neck of the woods would get hurt.”

LINCOLN’S NAME FOR “WEEPING WATER.”

“I was speaking one time to Mr. Lincoln,” said Governor Saunders, “of Nebraska, of a little Nebraskan settlement on the Weeping Water, a stream in our State.”

“‘Weeping Water!’ said he.

“Then with a twinkle in his eye, he continued.

“‘I suppose the Indians out there call Minneboohoo, don’t they? They ought to, if Laughing Water is Minnehaha in their language.’”

PETER CARTWRIGHT’S DESCRIPTION OF LINCOLN.

Peter Cartwright, the famous and eccentric old Methodist preacher, who used to ride a church circuit, as Mr. Lincoln and others did the court circuit, did not like Lincoln very well, probably because Mr. Lincoln was not a member of his flock, and once defeated the preacher for Congress. This was Cartwright’s description of Lincoln: “This Lincoln is a man six feet four inches tall, but so angular that if you should drop a plummet from the center of his head it would cut him three times before it touched his feet.”

NO DEATHS IN HIS HOUSE.

A gentleman was relating to the President how a friend of his had been driven away from New Orleans as a Unionist, and how, on his expulsion, when he asked to see the writ by which he was expelled, the deputation which called on him told him the Government would do nothing illegal, and so they had issued no illegal writs, and simply meant to make him go of his own free will.

“Well,” said Mr. Lincoln, “that reminds me of a hotel-keeper down at St. Louis, who boasted that he never had a death in his hotel, for whenever a guest was dying in his house he carried him out to die in the gutter.”

PAINTED HIS PRINCIPLES.

The day following the adjournment of the Baltimore Convention, at which President Lincoln was renominated, various political organizations called to pay their respects to the President. While the Philadelphia delegation was being presented, the chairman of that body, in introducing one of the members, said:

“Mr. President, this is Mr. S., of the second district of our State,--a most active and earnest friend of yours and the cause. He has, among other things, been good enough to paint, and present to our league rooms, a most beautiful portrait of yourself.”

President Lincoln took the gentleman’s hand in his, and shaking it cordially said, with a merry voice, “I presume, sir, in painting your beautiful portrait, you took your idea of me from my principles and not from my person.”

DIGNIFYING THE STATUTE.

Lincoln was married--he balked at the first date set for the ceremony and did not show up at all--November 4, 1842, under most happy auspices. The officiating clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Dresser, used the Episcopal church service for marriage. Lincoln placed the ring upon the bride’s finger, and said, “With this ring I now thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

Judge Thomas C. Browne, who was present, exclaimed, “Good gracious, Lincoln! the statute fixes all that!”

“Oh, well,” drawled Lincoln, “I just thought I’d add a little dignity to the statute.”

LINCOLN CAMPAIGN MOTTOES.

The joint debates between Lincoln and Douglas were attended by crowds of people, and the arrival of both at the places of speaking were in the nature of a triumphal procession. In these processions there were many banners bearing catch-phrases and mottoes expressing the sentiment of the people on the candidates and the issues.

The following were some of the mottoes on the Lincoln banners:

+----------------------------------------------------------+ |Westward the star of empire takes its way; | |The girls link on to Lincoln, their mothers were for Clay.| +----------------------------------------------------------+