LINCOLN KISSED A WOUNDED MAN IN HOSPITAL

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limb. Surgeons and nurses worked until daylight to stanch the flowing life blood. All in the ward were deeply interested, and there was many a sigh of relief from his companions when in the early morning word went down the line of cots that the artery had been 'taken up' and there was yet ground for hope.

About 9 o'clock of the following forenoon the door which I lay facing opened, and from the surgeon in charge of the corps hospital, Dr. McDonald, came the command, 'Attention! The President of the United States.' To myself, and probably to most of us, this was unexpected, for we had not known that President Lincoln had been visiting the army.

Raising my eyes to the doorway I had my first sight of the President, and it was not an impressive one. His clothes were travel stained, ill-fitting, and dusty; his hat was an immensely exaggerated type of the 'stove-pipe' variety; his neckwear was awry, and his face showed pressing need of the services of a barber. In short, his whole appearance seemed to justify the caricatures of those days in their

worst cartoons.

Unescorted, except by the surgeon, the President, bowing his tall form to enter the low doorway, stepped in,-turned a step or two to the right, and tenderly placing his hand on Houghton's forehead, stood for an instant looking into his face; then, bending down to the low cot, as a mother would to her child, he kissed Houghton's white cheek.

In voice so tender and so low that only my near proximity enabled me to hear, he began to talk to him, telling him how he had heard from Dr. McDonald all the story of his bravery in battle, his heroic fight for life, and quiet cheerfulness in hospital, and of the sad happening of the night.

Poor Houghton could only reply with faint smiles and whispers that were too low to reach my ears, but Mr. Lincoln heard, and a smile came to his grave face. Turning to his surgeon, the President asked to be shown the major's wounds, especially the amputated

limb. Dr. McDonald tried to dissuade him by saying the sight, especially after what had just taken place, would be too shocking. But the President insisted, turned down the light coverings, and took a hasty look. Straightening up, with a deep groan of pain, and throwing up both his long arms, he cried out, ‘Oh, this awful, awful war!' Then bending again to Houghton with the tears cutting wide furrows down his dust-stained cheeks, and with great sobs shaking him, he exclaimed, 'Poor boy! Poor boy! You must live! You must!' This time the major's whispered answer, I intend to, sir,' was just audible. [And here, let me say, in parenthesis, he did live, many long and useful years.] With a tender parting handstroke and a 'God bless you, my boy,' the President moved to the next cot in line, and to the next."

A

MINT OF LINCOLN'S WIT

MONG the following anecdotes, all authenticated, although credit is not always given, are many which are taken from war time newspapers, pamphlets, and collections of Lincoln "jokes." The Rebellion Record and other contemporary publications bristle with matters of this sort. The fact that they haven't been rewritten accounts for the form and tense in which they are told:

The following anecdote of President Lincoln is told in a letter from Panama which appears in the London Athenæum. The writer is referring to the war between Chile and Spain. "I asked the Chilean admiral who is an Englishman and came out with me why the Chileans did not try to get the greatest of American republics to help them. He thought it was no use trying to because a couple of years ago he was sent to Washington to get the permission of the government for the purchase and export of two vessels, at that time contraband of war.

President Lincoln received him with his usual affability, and while Seward was reading the Chilean state paper Abraham Lincoln said: "Admiral, I must tell you a little story. When a young man I was anxious to read a book which belonged to a neighbor of mine. 'Neighbor,' I asked, 'could you lend me this book?' 'Certainly,' he replied, 'you can come here and read it whenever you like.' As the book was rather a bulky one I thought this was rather an odd way of lending it to me, but I let that pass. A short time afterwards he came to me. 'Lincoln,' he asked, 'can you lend me your bellows?' 'Certainly,' I replied, 'here they are; you can come here and blow away as much as you like.' And that is exactly the case now, Admiral; you can come here and blow away as much as you like, but we cannot let you take the ships away."

During the Christmas holidays Mr. Lincoln found his way into the small room used as the postoffice of the House, where a few jovial raconteurs used to meet almost every morning after the mail

had been distributed into the members' boxes to exchange such new stories as any of them might have acquired since they had last met. After modestly standing at the door for several days, Mr. Lincoln was "reminded" of a story, and by New Year's he was recognized as the champion story teller of the capitol. His favorite seat was at the left of the open fireplace, tilted back in his chair, with his long legs reaching over to the chimney jamb. He never told a story twice, but appeared to have an endless collection of them, always ready, like the successive charges in a magazine gun, and always pertinently adapted to some passing event.

I remember his narrating his first experience in drilling his company. He was marching with a front of over twenty men across a field, when he desired to pass through a gateway into the next inclosure.

"I could not for the life of me," said he, "remember the proper word of command for getting my company endwise so that it could get through the gate, so, as we came near the gate, I shouted: "This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate.'

When the laugh which the description of these novel tactics caused had subsided, Mr. Lincoln added:

"And I sometimes think here that gentlemen in yonder who get into a tight place in debate would like to dismiss the House until the next day and then take a fair start."

President Lincoln once said that the best story he ever read in the papers of himself was this:

Two Quaker ladies were traveling on the railroad, and were heard discussing the probable termination of the war, "I think," said the first, "that Jefferson will succeed." "Why does thee think so?" asked the other. "Because Jefferson is a praying man." "And so is Abraham a praying man," objected the second. "Yes, but the Lord will think Abraham is joking," the first replied, conclusively.

Some moral philosopher was telling the President one day about the undercurrent of public opinion. He went on to explain at length and drew an illustration from the Mediterranean sea. The current seemed curiously to flow in both from the Black Sea and the Atlantic ocean, but a shrewd Yankee, by means of a contrivance of floats, had discovered that at the outlet into the Atlantic only about thirty feet of the surface water flowed inward, while there was a tremendous current under that flowing out. "Well," said Mr. Lincoln, much bored, "that doesn't remind me of any story I ever heard of. The philosopher despaired of making a serious impression by his argument and left.

The story will be remembered perhaps of Mr. Lincoln's reply to a Springfield (Ill.) clergyman who asked him what was to be his policy on the slavery question.

"Well, your question is a cool one, but I will answer it by telling you a story. You know Father B., the old Methodist preacher? And you know Fox river and its freshets? Well, once in the presence of Father B. a young Methodist was worrying about Fox river and expressing fears that he should be prevented from fulfilling some of his appointments by a freshet in the river. Father B. checked him in his gravest manner. Said he: 'Young man, I have always made it a rule in my life not to cross Fox river till I get to it.' 'And,' said the President, ‘I am not going to worry myself over the slavery question till I get to it.'" A few days afterwards a Methodist minister called on the President, and on being presented to him said simply: “Mr. President, I have come to tell you that I think we have got to Fox river." Mr. Lincoln thanked the clergyman and laughed heartily.