Lincoln's Yarns and Stories [117]
as high as his head, and read.
"He and I worked barefooted, grubbed it, plowed, mowed, cradled together; plowed corn, gathered it, and shucked corn. 'Abe' read constantly when he had an opportunity."
ETERNAL FIDELITY TO THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY.
During the Harrison Presidential campaign of 1840, Lincoln said, in a speech at Springfield, Illinois:
"Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was last to desert, but that I never deserted her.
"I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing.
"I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
"The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause which we believe to be just. It shall never deter me.
"If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
"Here, without contemplating consequences, before heaven, and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love; and who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take?
"Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed.
"But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so; we have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and, adorned of our hearts in disaster, in chains, in death, we never faltered in defending."
"ABE'S" "DEFALCATIONS."
Lincoln could not rest for as instant under the consciousness that, even unwittingly, he had defrauded anybody. On one occasion, while clerking in Offutt's store, at New Salem, he sold a woman a little bale of goods, amounting, by the reckoning, to $2.20. He received the money, and the woman went away.
On adding the items of the bill again to make himself sure of correctness, he found that he had taken six and a quarter cents too much.
It was night, and, closing and locking the store, he started out on foot, a distance of two or three miles, for the house of his defrauded customer, and, delivering to her the sum whose possession had so much troubled him, went home satisfied.
On another occasion, just as he was closing the store for the night, a wooman entered and asked for half a pound of tea. The tea was weighed out and paid for, and the store was left for the night.
The next morning Lincoln, when about to begin the duties of the day, discovered a four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw at once that he had made a mistake, and, shutting the store, he took a long walk before breakfast to deliver the remainder of the tea.
These are very humble incidents, but they illustrate the man's perfect conscientiousness--his sensitive honesty--better, perhaps, than they would if they were of greater moment.
HE WASN'T GUILELESS.
Leonard Swett, of Chicago, whose counsels were doubtless among the most welcome to Lincoln, in summing up Lincoln's character, said:
"From the commencement of his life to its close I have sometimes doubted whether he ever asked anybody's advice about anything. He would listen to everybody; he would hear everybody; but he rarely, if ever, asked for opinions.
"As a politician and as President he arrived at all his conclusions from his own reflections, and when his conclusions were once formed he never doubted but what they were right.
"One great public mistake of his (Lincoln's) character, as generally received and acquiesced in, is that
"He and I worked barefooted, grubbed it, plowed, mowed, cradled together; plowed corn, gathered it, and shucked corn. 'Abe' read constantly when he had an opportunity."
ETERNAL FIDELITY TO THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY.
During the Harrison Presidential campaign of 1840, Lincoln said, in a speech at Springfield, Illinois:
"Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was last to desert, but that I never deserted her.
"I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing.
"I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
"The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause which we believe to be just. It shall never deter me.
"If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
"Here, without contemplating consequences, before heaven, and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love; and who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take?
"Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed.
"But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so; we have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and, adorned of our hearts in disaster, in chains, in death, we never faltered in defending."
"ABE'S" "DEFALCATIONS."
Lincoln could not rest for as instant under the consciousness that, even unwittingly, he had defrauded anybody. On one occasion, while clerking in Offutt's store, at New Salem, he sold a woman a little bale of goods, amounting, by the reckoning, to $2.20. He received the money, and the woman went away.
On adding the items of the bill again to make himself sure of correctness, he found that he had taken six and a quarter cents too much.
It was night, and, closing and locking the store, he started out on foot, a distance of two or three miles, for the house of his defrauded customer, and, delivering to her the sum whose possession had so much troubled him, went home satisfied.
On another occasion, just as he was closing the store for the night, a wooman entered and asked for half a pound of tea. The tea was weighed out and paid for, and the store was left for the night.
The next morning Lincoln, when about to begin the duties of the day, discovered a four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw at once that he had made a mistake, and, shutting the store, he took a long walk before breakfast to deliver the remainder of the tea.
These are very humble incidents, but they illustrate the man's perfect conscientiousness--his sensitive honesty--better, perhaps, than they would if they were of greater moment.
HE WASN'T GUILELESS.
Leonard Swett, of Chicago, whose counsels were doubtless among the most welcome to Lincoln, in summing up Lincoln's character, said:
"From the commencement of his life to its close I have sometimes doubted whether he ever asked anybody's advice about anything. He would listen to everybody; he would hear everybody; but he rarely, if ever, asked for opinions.
"As a politician and as President he arrived at all his conclusions from his own reflections, and when his conclusions were once formed he never doubted but what they were right.
"One great public mistake of his (Lincoln's) character, as generally received and acquiesced in, is that