In the early days when Abraham Lincoln went with his pioneer father to
settle in wild Indiana, the chief diversion of the rude inhabitants was
from the preaching of the traveling pastors. They were singular
devotees whose sincerity redeemed all their flaws of ignorance,
illiteracy, and violence. Abraham, with his inherent proneness toward
imitation of oratory, used to "take them off" to the hilarity of the
laboring men who formed his first audiences. Out of his recollections
came this tale, which he liked to act out with all the quaint tones and
gestures the subject demanded.
The itinerant ranters held out at a schoolhouse near Lincoln's cabin;
but in fine weather preferred the academy--as the Platoists would
say--what was left of an oak grove, only one tree being spared, making
a pulpit with leafy canopy for the exhorter. This man was a Hard-shell
Baptist, commonly imperturbable to outside sights and doings when the
spirit moved him. His demeanor was rigid and his action angular and
restricted. He wore the general attire, coonskin cap or beaver hat,
hickory-dyed shirt, breeches loose and held up by plugs or makeshift
buttons, as our ancestors attached undergarments to the upper ones by
laces and points. The shirt was held by one button in the collar.
This dress little mattered, as a leaf screen woven for the occasion hid
the lower part of his frame and left the protruding head visible as he
leaned forward, standing on a log rolled up for the platform.
He gave out the text, from Corinthians: "Now if Timotheus come, see
that he may be with you without fear; for he worketh the work of the
law." The following runs: "Let no man despise him," etc.
As he began his speech, a tree-toad that had dropped down out of the
tree thought to return to its lookout to see if rain were coming. As
the shortest cut it took the man as a post. Scrambling over his
yawning, untanned ankle jack-boots, it slipped under the equally
yawning blue jeans. He commenced to scale the leg as the preacher
became conscious of the invasion. So, while spooning out the text, he
made a grab at the creature, which might be a centipede for all he
knew; and then, as it ascended, and his voice ascended a note or two,
with the words "be without fear," he slapped still higher. Then, still
speaking, but fearsomely animated, he clutched frantically, but always
a leetle behindhand, at the unknown monster which now reached the
imprisoning neckband. Here he tore at the button--the divine, not the
newt--and broke it free! As he finally yelled--sticking to the sermon
as to the hunt, "worketh the work of the law!" an old dame in among the
amazed congregation rose, and shrieked out:
"Well, if you represent Timotheus and that is working for the law--then
I'm done with the Apostles!"
* * * * *
"IF IT WILL DO THE PRESIDENT GOOD--"
G. H. Stuart, chief of the Christian Commission, was a Bible
distributer during the war. The organization had a special soldiers'
Bible called the Cromwell one, whose mixture of warrior and preacher
seemed to couple him with Abraham Lincoln. The soldiers usually
accepted a copy without pressing, though some said they preferred a
cracker. But one man, a Philadelphian, like Stuart himself, rejected
the offer. Among the colporteur's arguments, however, was one that
overcame him.
"I'll tell you that I commenced my tract distribution at the White
House, and the first person I offered one to was Abraham Lincoln. He
took it and promised to read it."
"I'll take one," promptly cried the man; "if the President thought it
would do _him_ good, it won't hurt me!"
* * * * *