President Lincoln was told that the Northern and Southern Democrats had
at last accomplished a fusion.
"Well, I believe you, of course," said he to the informant, "but I have
my doubts of the foundation, like my friend Brown. Brown is a sound
church member. He was member, too, of a township committee, having to
receive bids for building a bridge over a deep and rapid river. The
contractors did not seem to like the proposition, so Brown called in an
architectural acquaintance, named--we will say, Jones. At the question
'Can you build this bridge?' he was overbold, and replied: 'Yes, sir,
or any other. I could build a bridge from Sodom to Gomorrah with
abutment below.' The committee being good and select men were shocked
at the strong language, and Brown was called upon to defend his protégé.
"'I know Jones well enough,' he rejoined, 'and he is so honest a man
and good a builder, that if he states positively that he can build a
bridge from Sodom to Gomorrah, why, I believe him! But--I feel bound to
state that I am in some doubt as to the abutment on the other side!'
"My friend, I reassert I have my doubts about the abutment!"
* * * * *
"GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE PRESIDENT."
It was while at the store in New Salem that Lincoln made the
acquaintance of Richard Yates, contemporarily in office with him as war
governor of Illinois. So proud were the citizens of the colloquial
abilities of their rising young man that they used to show him to
visitors as their lion. Yates was introduced and stayed to hear him
roar. Later, Lincoln asked him to join him in his noon meal at the
cabin where a woman boarded him. The latter was one of those good souls
who give the best in the larder, but are all the time apologizing. They
had happened upon the ordinarily plain repast of bread--home-made, and
of the sweetest corn--and milk from the cow. Flurried by the unknown
company, the auntie, in dealing out the bowls to a numerous family,
somehow, between herself and Lincoln, let the vessel slip, and, falling
to the floor, it was smashed and the milk wasted. Lincoln disputed it
was her fault, as she politely averred. She continued to argue for her
guiltiness.
"Oh, very well," said Lincoln, at last, "we will not wrangle on whose
was the slip, or if it does not trouble you it will not trouble _me_.
Anyway, what is a basin of pap?--nothing to fret about!"
"Mr. Lincoln, you are wrong"--the woman remembered the children to whom
a lesson ought to be given--"a dish of bread and milk is fit for the
President of these United States."
Both the guests acquiesced. The cream of a story is in the application.
Years afterward, when the man from Sangamon, the unknown, occupied the
curule chair, an elderly woman from Illinois called at the White House
and requested an interview. It was the Aunt Lizzie of the above
episode. Her mere mention of being "home folks" won her admittance, and
her recognition the best of the Executive Mansion lard-pantry. When she
had finished the elegant collation, and intermingled the tasty morsels
with reminiscences, the host slyly inquired if now in the Presidential
dwelling she stuck to the sentiments about the diet enunciated in her
log cabin.
"Indeedy, I do! I still stick to it that bread and milk is a good
enough dish for the President."
Lincoln smiled with his sad smile. He had been long--not to say a
lengthy--martyr to dyspepsia, and she uttered a truism that struck him
to the--the digestive apparatus!
* * * * *