The Lincoln Story Book | Page 9

most despise women are the ones who seek to have her applause. He wished to see the man who would stop him from uttering his sentiments. He was answered that his business would be attended to, as soon as the offended ladies had withdrawn.
The undesired witnesses took the hint and quitted the store. Thereupon the long-limbed clerk verified the taunt of "counter-jumper" by clearing it at a bound. "Will you engage not to repeat that rowdy (blackguard) talk in the store while I am the master, and leave instanter?"
The bully protested in a torrent of unrepeatable words.
"I see," said the champion of decency, "you want a whipping, and I may as well give it you as any other man."
And he forthwith administered the correction; not only did he drag him outdoors, but laid him out so senseless that nothing less than the border finish of a knock-down and drag-out encounter--the rubbing the conquered man's eyes with smart-weed--revived him to beg for mercy, and a drink. The victor allowed him to rise, converted his appeal into mockery by offering plain water, which the brute applied solely to his doubly inflamed eyes, and sent him away in tears. But the shock had a reparative effect; he became a good neighbor, and a convert to temperance.
(This or a similar lesson to the village bully is testified to by an eye-witness of Sangamon, but resident of Viroqua, Wisconsin; his name is John White. He worked at chopping rails with the rail-splitter on more than one job.)
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TURN OUT OR BE TURNED OUT.
Superintendent Tinker, of the W. U. T., says he heard Secretary Seward say to President Lincoln:
"Mr. President, I hear that you turned out for a colored woman on a muddy crossing the other day?"
"Did you?" returned the other laughingly. "Well, I don't remember it; but I always make it a rule, if people do not turn out for me, I will for them. If I didn't, there would be a collision."
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THE BEST THING TO TAKE.
When Lincoln worked in and kept a grocery-store, it was flanked by a groggery and he had to supply spirits, but from that fact he saw the evils of the saloon and early identified himself with the novel temperance movement. In 1843, he joined the Sons of Temperance. While he said he was temperate on theory, it was not so--he was practically abstinent. Not only did he lecture publicly, but, at one such occasion, he gave out the pledges. In decorating a boy, Cleophas Breckenridge, with a badge, after he took the pledge, he said:
"Sonny, that is the best thing you will ever take."
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DRINKING AND SWALLOWING ARE TWO THINGS.
It has been stated that Lincoln, after reigning at the village store, had become the idol of the settlement. A stranger to whom he was shown was not properly impressed. One of the clerk's friends, William Greene, bragged that his favorite was the strongest man in the township--this was not affecting the critic--and even went on: "The strongest in the country!"
"H'm! not the strongest in the State!" denied the stranger. "I know a man who can lift a barrel of flour as easily as I can a peck of potatoes."
"Abe, there, could lift two barrels of flour if he could get a hold on them."
"You can beat me telling 'raisers', but--"
"Taking a lift out of you or not, I am willing to bet that Abe will lift a barrel of spirits and drink out of the bunghole to prove he can hold it there!"
"Impossible! What will you lay on the thing?"
They made a wager of a new hat--the Sunday hat of beaver being still costly.
Greene was betting unfairly--on a sure thing--as he had seen his friend do what he asserted, all but the drinking flourish. Lincoln was averse to the wagering at all, but to help his friend to the hat, he consented to the feat. He passed through it, lifting the cask between his two hands and holding the spigot-hole to his lips while he imbibed a mouthful. As he was slowly lowering the barrel to the floor, the winner exclaimed jubilately:
"I knew you would do it; but I never knew you to drink whisky before!"
The barrel was stood on the floor, when the drinker calmly expelled the mouthful of its contents, and drolly remarked:
"And I have not drunk that, you see!"
As a return for his action to win the hat, he asked Greene not to wager any more--a resolve which he took to oblige him.
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WORSTED IN A HORSE-TRADE.
Until Lincoln--seeing that his decisions created enemies, whichever way they fell--renounced being umpire for horse-racing and the like events, momentous on the border, he officiated in many such pastimes. Before he found them "all wrong," he had