Only once in the course of our long and rambling conversation did Lincoln
refer to the war. That was when he asked me how the soldiers' spirits were
keeping up. He said he had been giving out so much cheer to the generals
and Congressmen that he had pumped himself dry and must take in a new
supply from some source at once. He declared that his "ear bones ached" to
hear a good peal of honest laughter. It was difficult, he said, to laugh
in any acceptable manner when soldiers were dying and widows weeping, but
he must laugh soon even if he had to go down cellar to do it. He asked me
if I had thought how sacred a thing was a loving smile, and how important
it often was to laugh. Then he told how some Union officers in
reconnoitering had heard the Confederates laughing loudly over a game, and
returned cast down with fear of some sudden and successful attack by the
cheerful enemy. That laughter actually postponed a great battle for which
the Union soldiers had been prepared.
When, as I later ascertained, I had been with the President for almost two
hours, he suddenly straightened up in his chair, remarked that he "felt
much better now," and with a friendly but firm, "Good morning," turned
back to the papers before him on the table. This sounds abrupt as it is
told, but there was a homeliness and simplicity about everything Lincoln
did which robbed the action of any suspicion of discourtesy. One does not
shake hands with a member of his own family on merely quitting a room, and
I felt that a ceremonious dismissal would have been equally uncalled for
in this case. Perhaps I really should say that is the way I feel now; at
the time I did not think of the matter at all because what was done seemed
perfectly natural and proper.
In the anteroom the crowd was greater, if anything, than when I had gone
in. Among those callers there were certain to be some who would bring
trouble and vexation aplenty to the President. It was in preparation for
this that he had been resting himself, like a boxer between the rounds of
a bout. One would make a great error by supposing that Lincoln's normal
manner was that which he had exhibited to me. He could be soft and
tender-hearted as any woman, but within that kindly nature there lay
gigantic strength and the capacity for the most decisive action. He could
speak slowly and weigh his words when occasion demanded, but his usual
manner was vigorous and prompt--so much so that at times his speech had a
quality which might fairly be described as explosive.
This was because he always knew exactly what he wanted to say. He thought
out each problem to the end and decided it; then he left that and did not
trouble his mind about it any more, but took up something else. This habit
of disciplined thinking gave him a great advantage over most people, who
mix their thinking and try to carry on a dozen mental processes all at
once.
Lincoln realized the importance of mental discipline and he gave to humor
a high place as an aid to its attainment. I have already told how, in
discussing Artemus Ward with me, he said Ward was really an educator, for
he understood that the purpose of education was to discipline the mind, to
enable a man to think quickly and accurately in all circumstances of life.
I hope the reader will bear with me if I repeat some of the points which
Lincoln made then, because they show so clearly why he valued humor.
Lincoln said that much of Ward's humor was of the educational sort. It
aroused intellectual activity of the finest kind, and he mentioned Ward's
constant use of riddles as an illustration. Then he spoke of the ancient
Samson riddle and the fables of Aesop, and called attention to the fact
that they employed a joke to train the mind by the study of keen satire.
He said Ward was like that. It seems that Tad came to Ward at the table
one day after he had heard somewhere a joke about Adam in Eden. So he said
to Mr. Ward, "How did Adam get out of Eden?"
Ward had never heard the conundrum and did not give the answer Tad
expected, but he had one of his own, for he exclaimed "Adam was 'snaked'
out." It took Tad some little time to fathom this reply and gave him some
splendid mental exercise. Mr. Lincoln said he did not see why they did not
have a course of humor in the schools. It was characteristic of his great
modesty that whenever he referred to school or to college Lincoln always
tried to limit himself by saying that, as he did not know what they did
learn there, he was not an authority on the subject, but that
such-and-such a thing was just "his notion."
If discipline was a subjective purpose in Lincoln's use of humor, it may
be said with equal certainty that the illustrative power of a well-told
story was the principal objective use to which he put it. Lincoln seems
never to have told a story simply to relate it; everyone he told had an
application aside from the story itself. There is something profoundly
elemental about this; it is like the use of the parable in the teachings
of Christ.
Astute minds, capable of grasping the meaning of facts without
illustration, sometimes resented this habit of the President's; some of
the sharpest criticism, as might be expected, came from within the Cabinet
itself; but there can certainly be no just foundation for the statement
that Lincoln detained a full session of the Cabinet to read them two
chapters in Artemus Ward's book. He was not frivolous or shallow. His
reverence for great men, for great thoughts, and for great occasions was
most sensitively acute. He recognized the fact that "brevity is the soul
of wit," and would not have done more than use a condensed and brief
reference to Ward, at most. We know that on another occasion he made most
effective use at a Cabinet meeting of Ward's burlesque on Shaw patriotism
when he quoted Ward as saying that he "was willing, if need be, to
sacrifice all his wife's relations for his country."
An even better example of the President's use of humor is the following
story which he once told to illustrate the military situation existing at
the time. A bull was chasing a farmer around a tree. The farmer finally
got hold of the bull's tail, and both started off across the field. The
farmer could not let go for fear he would fall and break his head, but he
called out to the bull, "Who started this mess, anyway?" Lincoln said he
had gotten hold of the bull by the tail and that while the Confederacy was
running away he dared not let go. This summed up the situation in a way
the whole country could understand.
It is an interesting fact, and one not generally known, that Lincoln
committed almost every good story he heard to writing. If his old
notebooks could be found they would make a wonderful volume, but,
unfortunately, they have never come to light. Perhaps he felt ashamed of
them, as he did of his rough draft of the Gettysburg address, which he had
scribbled on the margin of a newspaper in the morning while riding to
Gettysburg on the train.
There was one source of Lincoln's humor--and perhaps it was the chief
one--which flowed from the very bedrock of his nature. That was the desire
to bring cheer to others. When he was passing through the very Valley of
the Shadow after the tragic end of the single love affair of his youth a
true friend told him that he had no right to look so glum--that it "was
his solemn duty to be cheerful," to cheer up others. Young Abe took the
lesson to heart, and he never forgot it. Incidentally, it was the means of
restoring him to health and probably of preserving his sanity--as the old
saint who gave him the lecture no doubt intended that it should.
In their common experience of an awful grief and in their ability to rise
above its devastation purged of selfishness and devoted to a career of
service, each according to his own gifts, Abraham Lincoln and Charles
Farrar Browne had followed the same path, and it was from this that there
sprang that deep and true bond of sympathy between the two men which
mystified so many even of those who considered themselves Lincoln's
intimates. Where another saw but the cap and bells, Lincoln saw and
reverenced the tortured, struggling soul within.
During our memorable talk on that December day in 1864 when the cares of
state were pressing so sorely upon him, the President told me that he was
greatly relieved in times of personal distress by trying to cheer up
somebody else. He spoke of it as being both selfish and unselfish. He said
he had been accused of telling thousands of stories he had never heard of,
but that he told stories to cheer the downhearted and tried to remember
stories that were cheerful to relate to people in discouraged
circumstances. He reminded me that his first practice of the law was among
very poor people. He tried to tell stories to his clients who were
discouraged, to give them courage, and he found the habit grew upon him
until he had to "draw in" and decline to use so many stories.
Bob Burdett, writing for the Burlington _Hawkeye_ shortly after the
President's death on April 15, 1865, said that Abraham Lincoln's humorous
anecdotes would soon die, but that Lincoln's humor, like John Brown's
soul, would be ever "marching on." No printed story which he told ever
expressed the soul of Lincoln fully. His own partial description of humor
as "that indefinable, intangible grace of spirit," is not to be found
exemplified in his published speeches. It is in the spirit which animated
them rather than in the works themselves that we must look for the vital
principle of Lincoln's humorous sayings.
To attempt the analysis of humor is as if a philosopher should try to put
a glance of love into a geometrical diagram or the soul of music into a
plaster cast. No one by searching can find it and no one by labor can
secure it. Yet so simple, so homely, and withal so shrewd was the humor of
Abraham Lincoln that one can easily picture him turning over in his mind
the words of his favorite quotation from the "Merchant of Venice"--one of
the few classical quotations he ever used--while he reflected, half
sadly, upon the cynicism and pettiness of mankind:
"Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time,
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes
And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper;
And others of such vinegar aspect
That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable."