Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, Volume 1 quotes

The elder Lincoln, true to the custom of the day, returned thanks for the blessing. The boy, realizing the scant proportions of the meal, looked up into his father's face and irreverently observed,

"Dad, I call these"—meaning the potatoes—"mighty poor blessings."

Among other children of a similar age he seemed unconsciously to take the lead, and it is no stretch of the truth to say that they, in turn, looked up to him.

… and sensitiveness, especially in the presence of men and women, and although cheerful enough in the presence of the boys, he did not appear to seek our company as earnestly as before."* It was only the development we find in the history of every boy.

Nature was a little abrupt in the case of Abraham Lincoln; she tossed him from the nimbleness of boyhood to the gravity of manhood in a single night.

* D. Turnham, MS. letter.

"'Tilda, what are you going to tell mother about getting hurt?" "Tell her I did it with the axe," she sobbed. "That will be the truth, won't it?" To which last inquiry Abe manfully responded,

"Yes, that's the truth, but it's not all the truth. Tell the whole truth,'Tilda, and trust your good mother for the rest."

This incident was, many years afterward, related to me by'Tilda, who was then the mother of a devoted and interesting family herself.

I used to get mad at him for it. I say he was awfully lazy. He would laugh and talk—crack his jokes and tell stories all the time; didn't love work half as much as his pay.

He said to me one day that his father taught him to work, but he never taught him to love it.

" Verily there was but one Abraham Lincoln!

He would laugh and talk—crack his jokes and tell stories all the time; didn't love work half as much as his pay. He said to me one day that his father taught him to work, but he never taught him to love it."

Verily there was but one Abraham Lincoln!

His chief delight during the day, if unmolested, was to lie down under the shade of some inviting tree to read and study.

Although imbued with a marked dislike for manual labor, it cannot be truthfully said of him that he was indolent. From a mental standpoint he was one of the most energetic young men of his day.

He dwelt altogether in the land of thought.

His deep meditation and abstraction easily induced the belief among his horny-handed companions that he was lazy. In fact, a neighbor, John Romine, makes that charge. "He worked for me," testifies the latter, "but was always reading and thinking.

The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of "unconquerable hate." Bidding his companions follow him he said,

"By God, boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that thing [meaning slavery], I'll hit it hard."

This incident was furnished me in 1865, by John Hanks. I have also heard Mr. Lincoln refer to it himself.

He had again retained the services of Lincoln to assist him when his merchandise should come to hand. The tall stranger—destined to be a stranger in New Salem no longer—pending the arrival of his employer's goods, lounged about the village with nothing to do.

Leisure never sat heavily on him.

To him there was nothing uncongenial in it, and he might very properly have been dubbed at the time a "loafer." He assured those with whom he came in contact that he was a piece of floating driftwood;

His strength, kindness of manner, love of fairness and justice, his original and unique sayings, his power of mimicry, his perseverance—-all made a combination rarely met with on the frontier.

Nature had burnt him in her holy fire, and stamped him with the seal of her greatness.

In the summer of 1834 Lincoln determined to make another race for the legislature; but this time he ran distinctly as a Whig.

while others with equal assurance whispered in the unfortunate girl's ear the old story of a rival in her affections. Anne's lady friends, strange to relate, did more to bring about a discordant feeling than all others.

Women are peculiar creatures. They love to nettle and mortify one another; and when one of their own sex has fallen, how little sympathy they seem to have!

But under all this fire, in the face of all these insidious criticisms, Anne remained firm. She had faith, and bided her time.

while, on the other hand, I am willing and even anxious to bind you faster if I can be convinced that it will in any considerable degree add to your happiness. This, indeed, is the whole question with me.

Nothing would make me more miserable, nothing more happy, than to know you were so.

"In what I have now said, I think I cannot be misunderstood; and to make myself understood is the sole object of this letter.

"All this while, although I was fixed, 'firm as the surge-repelling rock,' in my resolution, I found I was continually repenting the rashness which had led me to make it.

Through life, I have been in no bondage, either real or imaginary, from the thraldom of which I so much desired to be free.

After my return home, I saw nothing to change my opinions of her in any particular. She was the same, and so was I.

but this can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason:

I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to have me.

"When you receive this, write me a long yarn about something to amuse me. Give my respects to Mr. Browning.

During a visit which I made to the Eastern States in 1858, I was often asked for an account of the so-called duel; so often, in fact, that on my return home I told Mr. Lincoln of it.

"If all the good things I have ever done," he said regretfully, "are remembered as long and well as my scrape with Shields, it is plain I shall not soon be forgotten."

James Shields, a "gallant, hot-headed bachelor from Tyrone county, Ireland," and a man of inordinate vanity, had been elected Auditor of State. Encouraged somewhat by the prominence the office gave him, he at once assumed a conspicuous position in the society of Springfield.

I confess I was surprised when he invited me to become his partner. I was young in the practice and was painfully aware of my want of ability and experience; but when he remarked in his earnest, honest way,

"Billy, I can trust you, if you can trust me,"

I felt relieved, and accepted the generous proposal. It has always been a matter of pride with me that during our long partnership, continuing on until it was dissolved by the bullet of the assassin Booth, we never had any personal controversy or disagreement.

He took his friend James Matheney out into the woods with him one day and, calling up the bitter features of the canvass, protested "vehemently and with great emphasis" that he was anything but aristocratic and proud.

"Why, Jim," he said, "I am now and always shall be the same Abe Lincoln I was when you first saw me."

* Letter, A. Y. Ellis, July 16,'66, MS.

"

If you have any more old horses, trot them out; any more tails, just cock them and come at us.

I repeat, I would not introduce this mode of discussion here; but I wish gentlemen on the other side to understand that the use of degrading figures is a game at which they may find themselves unable to take all the winnings.

[A voice 'No, we give it up.'] Aye! you give it up, and well you may; but for a very different reason from that which you would have us understand.

The point—the power to hurt—of all figures consists in the truthfulness of their application

; and, understanding this, you may well give it up. They are weapons which hit you, but miss us.

"What," I inquired, "made the deepest impression on you when you stood in the presence of the great natural wonder?" I shall never forget his answer, because it in a very characteristic way illustrates how he looked at everything.

"The thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls," he responded, "was, where in the world did all that water come from?"

He had no eye for the magnificence and grandeur of the scene, for the rapids, the mist, the angry waters, and the roar of the whirlpool, but his mind, working in its accustomed channel, heedless of beauty or awe, followed irresistibly back to the first …

It was in this light he viewed every question. However great the verbal foliage that concealed the nakedness of a good idea

Lincoln stripped it all down till he could see clear the way between cause and effect.

If there was any secret in his power this surely was it.

There was of course the same riding on circuit as before, but the courts had improved in tone and morals, and there was less laxity—at least it appeared so to Lincoln.

Political defeat had wrought a marked effect on him. It went below the skin and made a changed man of him.

He was not soured at his seeming political decline, but still he determined to eschew politics from that time forward and devote himself entirely to the law. And now he began to make up for time lost in politics by studying the law in earnest.

Lincoln knew no such thing as order or method in his law practice.

He made no preparation in advance, but trusted to the hour for its inspiration and to Providence for his supplies.

In the matter of letter-writing** he made no distinction between one of a business nature or any other kind.

'Well, Billy,' addressing his partner, Mr. Herndon, 'here is our fee; sit down and let me divide.' He counted out $2,500 to his partner, and gave it to him with as much nonchalance as he would have given a few cents for a paper.

Cupidity had no abiding place in his nature.

"I took a good deal of pains in getting up a speech which I wanted to deliver during a political campaign. I told Mr. Lincoln that I would like to read it to him.

Elmer E. Ellsworth, afterwards colonel of the famous Zouaves, who was killed in Alexandria, early in the war, was nominally a student in Lincoln's office. His head was so full of military matters, however, that he thought little of law. Of Ellsworth, Lincoln said: '

That young man has a real genius for war!

'"

'This is the first case I have ever had in this court, and I have therefore examined it with great care. As the Court will perceive by looking at the abstract of the record, the only question in the case is one of authority.

I have not been able to find any authority to sustain my side of the case, but I have found several cases directly in point on the other side.

I will now give these authorities to the court, and then submit the case." A lawyer in Beardstown relates this: * "Lincoln came into my office one day with the remark:

It is only to get books and read and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone's Commentaries, and after reading carefully through, say twice, take up Chitty's Pleadings, Greenleaf's Evidence, and Story's Equity in succession.

Work, work, work, is the main thing.

"*

It was difficult for him to detect an impostor, and hence it is not to be marvelled at that he cautioned his secretaries:

"Keep them away—I cannot stand it."