Abraham Lincoln was not given to boasting, but he did pride himself on
his gift of memory of faces. It included all sorts of things. Among the
soldiers calling at the White House was one from his section. He knew
him at sight, used his name, and said:
"You used to live on the Danville road. I took dinner with you one time
I was running for the legislature. I recollect that we stood talking
together out at the barnyard gate while I sharpened my jack-knife on
your whetstone."
"So you did!" drawled the volunteer, delighted. "But, say, whatever did
you do with that stone? I looked for it mor'n a thousand times, but I
never could find it after the day you used it! We 'lowed that mebby you
took it along with you."
"No," replied the presumed purloiner seriously, "I sot it on the top of
the gate-post--the high one."
"Thunder! likely enough you did! Nobody else couldn't have boosted it
up there! and we never thought to look there for it!"
When the soldier was allowed to go home, the first thing he did was to
look up to that stone. Surely enough it was on the gate-post top! It
had lain there fifteen years, since the electioneerer had stuck it
there as easily as one might place it on a table.
* * * * *
"THE MONARCH OF ALL HE SURVEYED."
Lincoln's coquetting with the science of Gunter, Jack of all trades
that he was, empowered him to perpetrate a fine pun on the United
States surveyor-general in California, General Beall. This official
acquired in his course so much real estate of the first quality that on
a reference being made to it in the President's hearing, he observed:
"Yes, they say Beall is 'monarch of all he _surveyed_.'" (New York
_Herald_.)
* * * * *