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narrow channel, a boy pulled his coat-tail and hailed him with: 'Say, Mister Captain! I wish you would just stop your boat a minute-I've lost my apple overboard!'"

"Sitting on the Blister."

In August, 1864, the prospects of the Union party, in reference to the Presidential election, became very gloomy. A friend, the private secretary of one of the cabinet ministers, who spent a few days in New York at this juncture, returned to Washington with so discouraging an account of the political situation, that after hearing it, the Secretary told him to go over to the White House and repeat it to the President. My friend said that he found Mr. Lincoln alone, looking more than usually careworn and sad. Upon hearing the statement, he walked two or three times across the floor in silence. Returning, he said with grim earnestness of tone and manner: "Well, I cannot run the political machine; I have enough on my hands without that. It is the people's business,-the election is in their hands. If they turn their backs to the fire, and get scorched in the rear, they'll find they have got to 'sit' on the 'blister'!"

Sorry to Lose the Horses.

A juvenile "Brigadier" from New York, with a small detachment of cavalry, having imprudently gone within the Rebel lines near Fairfax Court House, was captured by "guerrillas." Upon the fact being reported to Mr. Lincoln, he said that he was very sorry to lose the horses!

"What do you mean?" inquired his informant. "Why," rejoined the President, "I can make a better 'brigadier' any day; but those horses cost the government a hundred and twenty-five dollars a head!"

The Strength of the Confederate Forces.

Mr. Lincoln sometimes had a very effective way of dealing with men who troubled him with questions. A visitor once asked him how many men the Rebels had in the field. The President replied, very seriously, "Twelve hundred thousand, according to the best authority." The interrogator blanched in the face, and ejaculated, "Good Heavens!" "Yes, sir; twelve hundred thousand-no doubt of it. You see, all of our generals, when they get whipped, say the enemy outnumbers them from three or five to one, and I must believe them. We have four hundred thousand men in the field, and three times four make twelve. Don't you see it?"

Chase's "Chin-fly."

"Within a month after Mr. Lincoln's first accession to office," says the Hon. Mr. Raymond, "when the South was threatening civil war, and armies of office-seekers were besieging him in the Executive Mansion, he said to a friend that he wished he could get time to attend to the Southern question; he thought he knew what was wanted, and believed he could do something towards quieting the rising discontent; but the office-seekers demanded all his time. 'I am,' said he, 'like a man so busy in letting rooms in one

end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.' Two or three years later, when the people had made him a candidate for reëlection, the same friend spoke to him of a member of his Cabinet who was a candidate also. Mr. Lincoln said he did not concern himself much about that. It was important to the country that the department over which his rival presided should be administered with vigor and energy, and whatever would stimulate the Secretary to such action would do good. 'R,' said he, 'you were brought up on a farm, were you not? Then you know what a chinfly is. My brother and I,' he added, 'were once ploughing corn on a Kentucky farm, I driving the horse, and he holding the plough. The horse was lazy; but on one occasion rushed across the field so that I, with my long legs, could scarcely keep pace with him. On reaching the end of the furrow, I found an enormous chin-fly fastened upon him, and knocked him off. My brother asked me what I did that for. I told him I didn't want the old horse bitten in that way. "Why," said my brother, "that's all that made him go!" Now,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'if Mr. - has a presidential chin-fly biting him, I'm not going to knock him off, if it will only make his department go."

Appointment of Chase as Chief Justice.

The Hon. Mr. Frank, of New York, told me that just after the nomination of Mr. Chase as Chief Justice, a deeply interesting conversation upon this subject took place one evening between himself and the President, in Mrs. Lin

coln's private sitting-room. Mr. Lincoln reviewed Mr. Chase's political course and aspirations at some length, alluding to what he had felt to be an estrangement from him personally, and to various sarcastic and bitter expressions reported to him as having been indulged in by the ex-Secretary, both before and after his resignation. The Congressman replied that such reports were always exaggerated, and spoke very warmly of Mr. Chase's great services in the hour of the country's extremity, his patriotism, and integrity to principle. The tears instantly sprang into Mr. Lincoln's eyes. "Yes," said he, "that is true. We have stood together in the time of trial, and I should despise myself if I allowed personal differences to affect my judgment of his fitness for the office of Chief Justice."

Frémont's Cave of Adullam.

The interview at which this conversation took place, occurred just after General Frémont had declined to run against him for the presidency. The magnificent Bible which the negroes of Baltimore had just presented to him lay upon the table, and Lincoln asking Colonel Deming if he remembered the text which his friends had recently applied to Frémont, instantly turned to a verse in the first of Samuel, put on his spectacles, and read in his slow, peculiar, and waggish tone: “And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became a captain over them, and there were with him about four hundred men."

Grant's Brand of Whiskey.

Just previous to the fall of Vicksburg, a selfconstituted committee, solicitous for the morale of our armies, took it upon themselves to visit the President and urge the removal of General Grant. In some surprise Mr. Lincoln inquired, "For what reason?" "Why," replied the spokesman, "he drinks too much whiskey." "Ah!" rejoined Mr. Lincoln, dropping his lower lip. "By the way, gentlemen, can either of you tell me where General Grant procures his whiskey? because, if I can find out, I will send every general in the field a barrel of it!"

On McClellan's Engineering Propensities. About two weeks after the Chicago Convention, the Rev. J. P. Thompson, of New York, asked the President: "What do you think, Mr. President, is the reason General McClellan does not reply to the letter from the Chicago Convention?" "Oh!" replied Mr. Lincoln, with a characteristic twinkle of the eye, "he is intrenching."

Some gentlemen were discussing in Mr. Lincoln's presence on a certain occasion General McClellan's military capacity. "It is doubtless true that he is a good 'engineer,'" said the President; "but he seems to have a special talent for developing a 'stationary' engine."

Borrowing McClellan's Army.

"On another occasion the President said he was in great distress (about the possibility of soon beginning operations with the Army of the Potomac); he had been to General McClellan's house, and the General did not ask to see him.

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