The Lincoln Story Book | Page 8

quietly on the frontier without
showing to such ruffians that his hands could shield his head. For the
honor of the store, the clerk had to stand up to the opponent.
The bout came off. In the first attack, Lincoln lifted the foe, though
heavier, clean off his feet, but he was unable to lay him down in the
orthodox manner, consisting in placing him flat on his back, with both
shoulder-blades denting the earth. The semi-victor amicably said: "Let's
quit, Jack! You see I cannot give you the fall--and you cannot give it
me."

The gang shouted for a resumption of the "sport," thinking this was
weakness of the competitor. They joined again, but Armstrong, having
his doubts, resorted to foul play--kicking or "legging," as the localism
stands. Indignantly, Lincoln drew him up again and shook him in
mid-air as a terrier does a rat. The rowdies, seeing their champion
bested, shouted for him to make a fight of it, and probably they would
have "mixed in" and made a "fight for all" in another minute. But Jack
had his doubts set at rest as to the prospect of overcoming a man who
could hold him out and off at arm's length; and, begging to be set down,
grasped his antagonist's hand in friendship and proclaimed him the best
man "who had ever broke into" that section. The two became friends,
and the gang gradually dwindled by this recession from their ranks of
their Goliath.
* * * * *
THE HORRORS FOR THE THIRD TIME!
When Abraham Lincoln was a poor young lawyer from Springfield,
attending the perambulatory court down at Lewiston, Illinois, he found
the place crowded by a Methodist meeting as well as the court having
an attractive case to try. He was obliged--because of exclusion from the
inn--to put up at the sheriff's house. Mrs. Davidson herself could only
offer him shares with Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, also a rising man, and
Peter Cartwright, the noted preacher--on the floor, but on a feather bed.
At that period the wild goose flew low. It may be supposed that the
student of Shakespeare might quote "When shall we three meet again?"
on rising between the famous border worthies in the dawn. The
hospitality was so refreshing that the trio spent the next night there.
They sat up by the large fireside, capping stories. The enmity of
lawyers, and even of politicians, is but skin-deep, and Steve and Abe
clashed not at all to meet the minister's reproof. Lincoln rocked while
story-telling in a cane-bottomed chair, taken from the steamboat
celebrated in Spoon River annals as its first navigator. Lincoln was the
more interested, as he had been boatman and pilot on his river, the
Sangamon. In the 1820's, this toy boat, the _Utility_, struggled into the
high water of Spoon River. It is a tributary of the Illinois. Now, though
the county is named Fulton, none of the inhabitants knew anything
about the inventor of steam navigation, and doubted that a steamboat
existed near them. Hence the snorting, puffing, and clangor of the

vessel as she surged against the freshet, alarmed all the population in
hearing when she ascended the virgin Spoon.
One Sam Jenkins had been on a spree for a week, and even he was
roused by the tremendous sound. As he rushed from his cabin, by the
terrific blaze from the high smoke-stack and the furnace burning
pitch-pine, he sank onto his shaking knees and yelled:
"Boys, I have got 'em for the third time! It is all up with me!"
* * * * *
THE WHISTLE THAT STOPPED THE BOAT.
Lincoln was pitted, as a lawyer, against a brother of the toga who was
of fat and plethoric habit, and who puffed and blowed when most he
wished to get on with his speech. The wag said:
"The gentleman reminds me of a little steamboat I knew about on the
Spoon River. She had been equipped with a whistle disproportionate to
her capacity of steam-power, and every time she blew off it stopped the
boat!"
* * * * *
IT IS THE DEED, NOT THE DOER.
By one of those unaccountable contradictions which disturb one's
calculations upon women's conduct, the fair sex "took to" him with
extraordinary kindness, though he always remained shy in their
presence. This favor on their part was fortified by his striking honesty
in little points which the close-seeing feminine eye never misses. To
cap the climax he defended the purity of social order with a rarity in
those quarters sufficient to single him out. Not that the roughest
Westerner was not excessively gallant, but his restrictions in the ladies'
presence did not always curb his proneness to "tall talk."
Once in the way, a loafer hanging about in