Lincoln's Yarns and Stories [163]
President Lincoln promptly responded:
"Chase, never regret what you don't write; it is what you do write that you are often called upon to feel sorry for."
A VAIN GENERAL.
In an interview between President Lincoln and Petroleum V. Nasby, the name came up of a recently deceased politician of Illinois whose merit was blemished by great vanity. His funeral was very largely attended.
"If General --- had known how big a funeral he would have had," said Mr. Lincoln, "he would have died years ago."
DEATH BED REPENTANCE.
A Senator, who was calling upon Mr. Lincoln, mentioned the name of a most virulent and dishonest official; one, who, though very brilliant, was very bad.
"It's a good thing for B---" said Mr. Lincoln. "that there is such a thing as a deathbed repentance."
NO CAUSE FOR PRIDE.
A member of Congress from Ohio came into Mr. Lincoln's presence in a state of unutterable intoxication, and sinking into a chair, exclaimed in tones that welled up fuzzy through the gallon or more of whiskey that he contained, "Oh, 'why should (hic) the spirit of mortal be proud?'"
"My dear sir," said the President, regarding him closely, "I see no reason whatever."
...THE STORY OF LINCOLN'S LIFE...
When Abraham Lincoln once was asked to tell the story of his life, he replied:
"It is contained in one line of Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard':
"'The short and simple annals of the poor.'"
That was true at the time he said it, as everything else he said was Truth, but he was then only at the beginning of a career that was to glorify him as one of the heroes of the world, and place his name forever beside the immortal name of the mighty Washington.
Many great men, particularly those of America, began life in humbleness and poverty, but none ever came from such depths or rose to such a height as Abraham Lincoln.
His birthplace, in Hardin county, Kentucky, was but a wilderness, and Spencer county, Indiana, to which the Lincoln family removed when Abraham was in his eighth year, was a wilder and still more uncivilized region.
The little red schoolhouse which now so thickly adorns the country hillside had not yet been built. There were scattered log schoolhouses, but they were few and far between. In several of these Mr. Lincoln got the rudiments of an education--an education that was never finished, for to the day of his death he was a student and a seeker after knowledge.
Some records of his schoolboy days are still left us. One is a book made and bound by Lincoln himself, in which he had written the table of weights and measures, and the sums to be worked out therefrom. This was his arithmetic, for he was too poor to own a printed copy.
A YOUTHFUL POET.
On one of the pages of this quaint book he had written these four lines of schoolboy doggerel:
"Abraham Lincoln, His Hand and Pen, He Will be Good, But God knows when."
The poetic spirit was strong in the youngscholar just then for on another page of the same book he had written these two verses, which are supposed to have been original with him:
"Time, what an empty vapor 'tis, And days, how swift they are; Swift as an Indian arrow Fly on like a shooting star.
The present moment just is here, Then slides away in haste, That we can never say they're ours, But only say they're past."
Another specimen of the poetical, or rhyming ability, is found in the following couplet, written by him for his friend, Joseph C. Richardson:
"Good boys who to their books apply, Will all be great men by and by."
In all, Lincoln's "schooling" did not amount to a year's time, but he was a constant student outside of the schoolhouse. He read all the books he could borrow, and it was his chief delight during the day to lie under the shade of some tree, or at night in front of an open fireplace, reading and studying. His favorite books were the Bible and Aesop's fables, which he kept always within reach and read time and again.
The first law book he ever read was "The Statutes of Indiana," and it was from this