CHAPTER VIII.

THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF HIS CHARACTER.

No one knew better than Mr. Lincoln that genuine humor is "a plaster that heals many a wound;" and certainly no man ever had a larger stock of that healing balm or knew better how to use it. His old friend I. N. Arnold once remarked that Lincoln's laugh had been his "life-preserver." Wit, with that illustrious man, was a jewel whose mirth-moving flashes he could no more repress than the diamond can extinguish its own brilliancy. In no sense was he vain of his superb ability as a wit and story-teller.

Noah Brooks says in an article written for Harper's Monthly, three months after Mr. Lincoln's death, that the President once said, that, as near as he could reckon, about one sixth only of the stories credited to him were old acquaintances,--all the others were the productions of other and better story-tellers than himself. "I remember," said he, "a good story when I hear it; but I never invented anything original. I am only a retail-dealer." No man was readier than he to acknowledge the force of Shakespeare's famous lines,

"A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it; never in the tongue Of him that makes it."

Mr. Lincoln's stories were generally told with a well-defined purpose,--to cheer the drooping spirits of a friend; to lighten the weight of his own melancholy,--"a pinch, as it were, of mental snuff,"--to clinch an argument, to expose a fallacy, or to disarm an antagonist; but most frequently he employed them simply as "labor-saving contrivances." He believed, with the great Ulysses of old, that there is naught "so tedious as a twice-told tale;" and during my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln I seldom heard him relate a story the second time. The most trifling circumstances, or even a word, was enough to remind him of a story, the aptness of which no one could fail to see. He cared little about high-flown words, fine phrases, or merely ornamental diction; and yet, for one wholly without scholastic training, he was master of a style which was remarkable for purity, terseness, vigor, and force. As Antenor said of the Grecian king, "he spoke no more than just the thing he thought;" and that thought he clothed in the simplest garb, often sacrificing the elegant and poetic for the homely and prosaic in the structure of his sentences.

In one of his messages to Congress Mr. Lincoln used the term "sugar-coated." When the document was placed in the hands of the public printer, Hon. John D. Defrees, that officer was terribly shocked and offended. Mr. Defrees was an accomplished scholar, a man of fastidious taste, and a devoted friend of the President, with whom he was on terms of great intimacy. It would never do to leave the forbidden term in the message; it must be expunged,--otherwise it would forever remain a ruinous blot on the fair fame of the President. In great distress and mortification the good Defrees hurried away to the White House, where he told Mr. Lincoln plainly that "sugar-coated" was not in good taste.

"You ought to remember, Mr. President," said he, "that a message to the Congress of the United States is quite a different thing from a speech before a mass meeting in Illinois; that such messages become a part of the history of the country, and should therefore be written with scrupulous care and propriety. Such an expression in a State paper is undignified, and if I were you I would alter the structure of the whole sentence."

Mr. Lincoln laughed, and then said with a comical show of gravity: "John, that term expresses precisely my idea, and I am not going to change it. 'Sugar-coated' must stand! The time will never come in this country when the people will not understand exactly what 'sugar-coated' means."

Mr. Defrees was obliged to yield, and the message was printed without amendment.

One day at a critical stage of the war, Mr. Lincoln sat in his office in deep meditation. Being suddenly aroused, he said to a gentleman whose presence he had not until that moment observed: "Do you know that I think General ---- is a philosopher? He has proved himself a really great man. He has grappled with and mastered that ancient and wise admonition, 'Know thyself;' he has formed an intimate acquaintance with himself, knows as well for what he is fitted and unfitted as any man living. Without doubt he is a remarkable man. This war has not produced another like him."

"Why is it, Mr. President," asked his friend, "that you are now so highly pleased with General ----? Has your mind not undergone a change?"

"Because," replied Mr. Lincoln, with a merry twinkle of the eye, "greatly to my relief, and to the interests of the country, _he has resigned_. And now I hope some other dress-parade commanders will study the good old admonition, 'Know thyself,' and follow his example."

On the 3d of February, 1865, during the so-called Peace Conference at Hampton Roads between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward on the one side and the Messrs. Stephens, Campbell, and Hunter on the other, Mr. Hunter remarked that the recognition of the Confederate government by President Lincoln was indispensable as the first step towards peace; and he made an ingenious argument in support of his proposition, citing as a precedent for the guidance of constitutional rulers in dealing with insurgents the case of Charles I. and his rebel Parliament. This reference to King Charles as a model for imitation by a President of the United States was a little unfortunate, but Mr. Lincoln was more amused than offended by it. Turning to Mr. Hunter he said: "On the question of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, who is posted in such matters. I don't pretend to be; but I have a tolerably distinct recollection, in the case you refer to, that Charles lost his head, and I have no head to spare."

Mr. Hunter, during the same conference, in speaking of emancipation, remarked that the slaves had always been accustomed to work on compulsion, under an overseer; and he apprehended they would, if suddenly set free, precipitate themselves and the whole social fabric of the South into irretrievable ruin. In that case neither the whites nor the blacks would work. They would all starve together. To this Mr. Lincoln replied: "Mr. Hunter, you ought to know a great deal more about this matter than I do, for you have always lived under the slave system. But the way you state the case reminds me of an Illinois farmer who was not over-fond of work, but was an adept in shirking. To this end he conceived a brilliant scheme of hog culture. Having a good farm, he bought a large herd of swine. He planted an immense field in potatoes, with the view of turning the whole herd into it late in the fall, supposing they would be able to provide for themselves during the winter. One day his scheme was discussed between himself and a neighbor, who asked him how the thing would work when the ground was frozen one or two feet deep. He had not thought of that contingency, and seemed perplexed over it. At length he answered: 'Well, it will be a leetle hard on their snouts, I reckon; but them shoats will have to root, hog, or die.' And so," concluded Mr. Lincoln, "in the dire contingency you name, whites and black alike will have to look out for themselves; and I have an abiding faith that they will go about it in a fashion that will undeceive you in a very agreeable way."

During the same conference, in response to certain remarks by the Confederate commissioners requiring explicit contradiction, Mr. Lincoln animadverted with some severity upon the conduct of the rebel leaders, and closed with the statement that they had plainly forfeited all right to immunity from punishment for the highest crime known to the law. Being positive and unequivocal in stating his views concerning individual treason, his words seemed to fall upon the commissioners with ominous import. There was a pause, during which Mr. Hunter regarded the speaker with a steady, searching look. At length, carefully measuring his own words, Mr. Hunter said: "Then, Mr. President, if we understand you correctly, you think that we of the Confederacy have committed treason; that we are traitors to your government; that we have forfeited our rights, and are proper subjects for the hangman. Is not that about what your words imply?"

"Yes," said Mr. Lincoln, "you have stated the proposition better than I