Lincoln's Yarns and Stories [100]
coal and brought the iron to a white heat; then with his tongs he lifted it from the bed of coals, and thrusting it into a tub of water near by, exclaimed: 'Well, if I can't make anything else of you, I will make a fizzle, anyhow.'" "I was afraid that was about what we had done with the Dutch Gap Canal," said General Grant.
A TEETOTALER.
When Lincoln was in the Black Hawk War as captain, the volunteer soldiers drank in with delight the jests and stories of the tall captain. Aesop's Fables were given a new dress, and the tales of the wild adventures that he had brought from Kentucky and Indiana were many, but his inspiration was never stimulated by recourse to the whisky jug.
When his grateful and delighted auditors pressed this on him he had one reply: "Thank you, I never drink it."
NOT TO "OPEN SHOP" THERE.
President Lincoln was passing down Pennsylvania avenue in Washington one day, when a man came running after him, hailed him, and thrust a bundle of papers in his hands.
It angered him not a little, and he pitched the papers back, saying, "I'm not going to open shop here."
WE HAVE LIBERTY OF ALL KINDS.
Lincoln delivered a remarkable speech at Springfield, Illinois, when but twenty-eight years of age, upon the liberty possessed by the people of the United States.
In part, he said:
"In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.
"We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.
"We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which history of former times tells us.
"We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings.
"We toiled not in the acquisition or establishment of them; they are a legacy bequeathed to us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors.
"Theirs was the task (and nobly did they perform it) to possess themselves, us, of this goodly land, to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours to transmit these--the former unprofaned by the foot of an intruder, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation--to the generation that fate shall permit the world to know.
"This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity--all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
"How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?
"Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?
"Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa, combined, with all the treasures of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
"At what point, then, is this approach of danger to be expected?
"I answer, if ever it reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad.
"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
"As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.
"I hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now something of ill-omen amongst us.
"I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice.
"This disposition is awfully fearful in any community, and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to deny.
"Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news
A TEETOTALER.
When Lincoln was in the Black Hawk War as captain, the volunteer soldiers drank in with delight the jests and stories of the tall captain. Aesop's Fables were given a new dress, and the tales of the wild adventures that he had brought from Kentucky and Indiana were many, but his inspiration was never stimulated by recourse to the whisky jug.
When his grateful and delighted auditors pressed this on him he had one reply: "Thank you, I never drink it."
NOT TO "OPEN SHOP" THERE.
President Lincoln was passing down Pennsylvania avenue in Washington one day, when a man came running after him, hailed him, and thrust a bundle of papers in his hands.
It angered him not a little, and he pitched the papers back, saying, "I'm not going to open shop here."
WE HAVE LIBERTY OF ALL KINDS.
Lincoln delivered a remarkable speech at Springfield, Illinois, when but twenty-eight years of age, upon the liberty possessed by the people of the United States.
In part, he said:
"In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.
"We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.
"We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which history of former times tells us.
"We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings.
"We toiled not in the acquisition or establishment of them; they are a legacy bequeathed to us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors.
"Theirs was the task (and nobly did they perform it) to possess themselves, us, of this goodly land, to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours to transmit these--the former unprofaned by the foot of an intruder, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation--to the generation that fate shall permit the world to know.
"This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity--all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
"How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?
"Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?
"Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa, combined, with all the treasures of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
"At what point, then, is this approach of danger to be expected?
"I answer, if ever it reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad.
"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
"As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.
"I hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now something of ill-omen amongst us.
"I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice.
"This disposition is awfully fearful in any community, and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to deny.
"Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news