The Abraham Lincoln Statue at Chicago is accepted as the typical
Westerner of the forum, the rostrum, and the tribune, as he stood to be
inaugurated under the war-cloud in 1861. But there is another Lincoln
as dear to the common people--the Lincoln of happy quotations, the
speaker of household words. Instead of the erect, impressive,
penetrative platform orator we see a long, gaunt figure, divided
between two chairs for comfort, the head bent forward, smiling broadly,
the lips curved in laughter, the deep eyes irradiating their caves of
wisdom; the story-telling Lincoln, enjoying the enjoyment he gave to
others.
This talkativeness, as Lincoln himself realized, was a very valuable
asset. Leaving home, he found, in a venture at "Yankee notion-pedling,"
that glibness meant three hundred per cent, in disposing of flimsy
wares. In the camp of the lumber-jacks and of the Indian rangers he was
regarded as the pride of the mess and the inspirator of the tent. From
these stages he rose to be a graduate of the "college" of the
yarn-spinner--the village store, where he became clerk.
The store we know is the township vortex where all assemble to "swap
stories" and deal out the news. Lincoln, from behind the counter--his
pulpit--not merely repeated items of information which he had heard,
but also recited doggerel satire of his own concoction, punning and
emitting sparks of wit. Lincoln was hailed as the "capper" of any "good
things on the rounds."
Even then his friends saw the germs of the statesman in the lank,
homely, crack-voiced hobbledehoy. Their praise emboldened him to stand
forward as the spokesman at schoolhouse meetings, lectures,
log-rollings, huskings auctions, fairs, and so on--the folk-meets of
our people. One watching him in 1830 said foresightedly: "Lincoln has
touched land at last."
In commencing electioneering, he cultivated the farming population and
their ways and diction. He learned by their parlance and Bible phrases
to construct "short sentences of small words," but he had all along the
idea that "the plain people are more easily influenced by a broad and
humorous illustration than in any other way." It is the Anglo-Saxon
trait, distinguishing all great preachers, actors, and authors of that
breed.
He acknowledged his personal defects with a frankness unique and
startling; told a girl whom he was courting that he did not believe any
woman could fancy him; publicly said that he could not be in looks what
was rated a gentleman; carried the knife of "the homeliest man";
disparaged himself like a Brutus or a Pope Sixtus. But the mass
relished this "plain, blunt man who spoke right on."
He talked himself into being the local "Eminence," but did not succeed
in winning the election when first presented as "the humble" candidate
for the State Senate. He stood upon his "imperfect education," his not
belonging "to the first families, but the seconds"; and his shunning
society as debarring him from the study he required.
Repulsed at the polls, he turned to the law as another channel,
supplementing forensic failings by his artful story-telling. Judges
would suspend business till "that Lincoln fellow got through with his
yarn-spinning" or underhandedly would direct the usher to get the rich
bit Lincoln told, and repeat it at the recess.
Mrs. Lincoln, the first to weigh this man justly, said proudly, that
"Lincoln was the great favorite everywhere."
Meanwhile his fellow citizens stupidly tired of this Merry Andrew--they
"sent him elsewhere to talk other folks to death"--to the State House,
where he served several terms creditably, but was mainly the fund of
jollity to the lobby and the chartered jester of the lawmakers.
Such loquacious witchery fitted him for the Congress. Elected to the
House, he was immediately greeted by connoisseurs of the best
stamp--President Martin van Buren, "prince of good fellows;" Webster,
another intellect, saturnine in repose and mercurial in activity; the
convivial Senator Douglas, and the like. These formed the rapt ring
around Lincoln in his own chair in the snug corner of the congressional
chat-room. Here he perceived that his rusticity and shallow skimmings
placed him under the trained politicians. It was here, too, that his
stereotyped prologue to his digressions--"That reminds me"--became
popular, and even reached England, where a publisher so entitled a
joke-book. Lincoln displaced "Sam Slick," and opened the way to Artemus
Ward and Mark Twain. The longing for elevation was fanned by the
association with the notables--Buchanan, to be his predecessor as
President; Andrew Johnson, to be his vice and successor; Jefferson
Davis and Alex. H. Stephens, President and Vice-President of the C. S.
A.; Adams, Winthrop, Sumner, and the galaxy over whom his solitary star
was to shine dazzlingly.
A sound authority who knew him of old pronounced him "as good at
telling an anecdote as in the '30's." But the fluent chatterer reined
in and became a good listener. He imbibed all the political ruses, and
returned home with his quiver full of new and victorious arrows for the
Presidential campaign, for his bosom friends urged him to try to
gratify that ambition, preposterous when he first felt it attack him.
He had grown out of the sensitiveness that once made him beg the
critics not to put him out by laughing at his appearance. He formed a
boundless arsenal of images and similes; he learned the American
humorist's art not to parade the joke with a discounting smile. He
worked out Euclid to brace his fantasies, as the steel bar in a cement
fence-post makes it irresistibly firm. But he allowed his vehement
fervor to carry him into such flights as left the reporters unable to
accompany his sentences throughout.
He was recognized as the destined national mouthpiece. He was not of
the universities, but of the universe; the Mississippi of Eloquence,
uncultivated, stupendous, enriched by sweeping into the innumerable
side bayous and creeks.
Elected and re-elected President, he continued to be a surprise to
those who shrank from levity. Lincoln was their puzzle; for he had a
sweet sauce for every "roast," and showed the smile of invigoration to
every croaking prophet. His state papers suited the war tragedies, but
still he delighted the people with those tales, tagging all the events
of what may be called the Lincoln era. The camp and the press echoed
them though the Cabinet frowned--secretaries said that they exposed the
illustrious speaker to charges of "clownishness and buffoonery."
But this perennial good-humor--perfectly poised by the
people--alleviated the strain of withstanding that terrible avalanche
threatening to dismember and obliterate the States and bury all the
virtues and principles of our forefathers.
Even his official letters were in the same vein. Regarding the one to
England which meant war, he asked of Secretary Seward if its language
would be comprehended by our minister at the Victorian court, and added
dryly: "Will James, the coachman at the door--will he understand it?"
Receiving the answer, he nodded grimly and said: "Then it goes!" It
went, and there was no war with the Bull.
Time has refuted the purblind purists, the chilly "wet-blankets"; and
the Lincoln stories, bright, penetrative, piquant, and pertinent are
our classics. Hand in hand with "Father Abraham," the President next to
Washington in greatness, walks "Old Abe, the Story-teller."