Mrs. Rose Linder Wilkinson, who often accompanied her father, Judge
Linder, in the days when he rode circuit with Mr. Lincoln, tells the
following story:
“At night, as a rule, the lawyers spent awhile in the parlor, and
permitted the women who happened to be along to sit with them. But after
half an hour or so we would notice it was time for us to leave them. I
remember traveling the circuit one season when the young wife of one of
the lawyers was with him. The place was so crowded that she and I were
made to sleep together. When the time came for banishing us from the
parlor, we went up to our room and sat there till bed-time, listening
to the roars that followed each ether swiftly while those lawyers
down-stairs told stories and laughed till the rafters rang.
“In the morning Mr. Lincoln said to me: ‘Rose, did we disturb your sleep
last night?’ I answered, ‘No, I had no sleep’--which was not entirely
true but the retort amused him. Then the young lawyer’s wife complained
to him that we were not fairly used. We came along with them, young
women, and when they were having the best time we were sent away like
children to go to bed in the dark.
“‘But, Madame,’ said Mr. Lincoln, ‘you would not enjoy the things we
laugh at.’ And then he entered into a discussion on what have been
termed his ‘broad’ stories. He deplored the fact that men seemed to
remember them longer and with less effort than any others.
“My father said: ‘But, Lincoln, I don’t remember the “broad” part of
your stories so much as I do the moral that is in them,’ and it was a
thing in which they were all agreed.”