Part 49 (1/2)

”'Gentlemen,' said he, in a voice full of bitterness, 'after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest has opposed the South as New England opposed the South. It was you who were largely responsible for causing the blood to flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You called for emanc.i.p.ation, and I have given it to you. Whatever you have asked, you have had.

”'Now you come here, begging to be let off from the call for men which I have made to carry out the war you demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a right to expect better things of you!

”'Go home and raise your six thousand extra men--the Cook County rate. And you, Medill, you are acting like a coward! You and your _Tribune_ have had more influence than any paper in the Northwest in making this war. Go home and send us those men!'” They went home, and they raised and sent those men!

”SOONER THE FOWL BY HATCHING THE EGG THAN SMAs.h.i.+NG IT.”

”Still the question is not whether the Louisiana Government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse?... Concede that the new government is to what it should be as the egg to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smas.h.i.+ng it. (Laughter.)”--(Speech by A. Lincoln, his last! in answer to a serenade at the White House, 11th April, 1865, amid illuminations for the victories.)

TOO BUSY TO GO INTO ANOTHER BUSINESS.

There came into the presidential hearing a man of French accent from New Orleans. He was evidently a diffident person, not knowing how precisely to state his case. But the burden of it was that he was a real-estate holder in New Orleans, and, since the advent of military rulers there, he could not collect his rents, his living.

”Your case, my friend,” said the President, ”may be a hard one, but it might be worse. If, with your musket, you had taken your chances with the boys before Richmond, you might have found your bed and board before now! But the point is, what would you have me do for you? I have much to do, and the courts have been opened to relieve me in this regard.”

The applicant, still embarra.s.sed, said: ”I am not in the habit of appearing before _big men_.”

”And for that matter,” it was quickly responded, ”you have no need to change your habit, for you are not before very big men now;” playfully adding: ”I am too busy to go into the rent-collection business.”

THE SCALE OF REBELS.

When, at the finale, Lincoln reproved his own wife for using the hackneyed expression of rebels, suggesting Confederates, as officially accepted on both sides, a wit commented:

”The Southerners will be like the Jews. As a poor one is simply a Jew, a rich one a Hebrew, and a Rothschild an Israelite, so it will be rebels, Confederates, and our Southern brothers anew!”

ONE WAR AT A TIME.

When the Austrian archduke, Maximilian, was foisted upon Mexico as its emperor by Napoleon III., the Southerners, who did not have their ”bellyful of fighting” by 1864, more than hinted that they would range shoulder to shoulder with the Federals to try to expel him and the mercenary Marshal Bazaine. But the President returned sagaciously:

”One war at a time!”

It was under his successor, Johnson, that the expulsion was effected and the upstart executed by the exasperated Mexicans themselves.

(NOTE.--This was undoubtedly said, but Mr. Henry Watterson, in his lecture on Lincoln, dates it as at the commencement of the war, when Secretary Seward, to forestall possible European alliances in favor of the Confederate States, proposed waging war against France and Spain, already allied, and challenging Russia and England to follow.)

”AGIN' THE GOVERNMENT.”