ceeded to the War Department. While there, the telegram came announcing the nomination of Johnson. "What," said he to the operator, "do they nominate a Vice-President before they do a President?" "Why," replied the astonished official, "have you not heard of your own nomination? It was sent to the White House two hours ago" "It is all right," replied the President; "I shall probably find it on my return."

Laughing pleasantly over this incident, he said, soon afterward: "A very singular occurrence took place the day I was nominated at Chicago, four years ago, which I am reminded of to-night. In the afternoon of the day, returning home from down town, I went up-stairs to Mrs. Lincoln's sitting-room. Feeling somewhat tired, I lay down upon a couch in the room, directly opposite a bureau upon which was a looking-glass. As I reclined, my eye fell upon the glass, and I saw distinctly two images of myself, exactly alike, except that one was a little paler than the other. I arose, and lay down again, with the same result. It made me quite uncomfortable for a few moments; but some friends coming in, the matter passed out of my mind. The next day, while walking in the street, I was suddenly reminded of the cir cumstance, and the disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I had never seen any thing of the kind before, and did not know what to make of it. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position, and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment, with the same result, and as I had said to myself, accounting for it on some principle unknown to me, it ceased to trouble me. But," said he, "some time ago I tried to produce the same effect here, by arranging a glass and couch in the same position, without success." He did not say, as is asserted in the story as printed, that either he or Mrs. Lincoln attached any omen to it whatever. Neither did he say the double reflection was seen while he was walking about the room. On the contrary, it was only visible in a certain position, and at a certain angle, and therefore, he thought, could be accounted for upon scien tific principles.

A distinguished public officer being in Washington, in an interview with the President, introduced the question of emancipation. "Well, you see," said Mr. Lincoln, "we've got to be very cautious how we manage the negro question. If we're not, we shall be like the barber out in Illinois, who was shaving a fellow with a hatchet face and lantern jaws like mine. The barber stuck his finger in his customer's

mouth to make his cheek stick out, but while shaving away he c through the fellow's cheek and cut off his own finger! If we are not very careful, we shall do as the barber did!"

At the White House one day some gentlemen were present from the West, excited and troubled about the commissions or omissions of the Administration. The President heard them patiently, and then replied: "Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Biondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the cable, or keep shouting out to him-Blondin, stand up a little straighter-Blondin, stoop a little more-go a little faster-lean a little more to the north-lean a little more to the south? No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government are carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they can. Don't badger them. Keep silence, and we'll get you safe across.”

Being asked at another time by an "anxious" visitor as to what he would do in certain contingencies-provided the rebellion was not subdued after three or four years of effort on the part of the Govern ment-"Oh," said the President, "there is no alternative but to keep 'pegging' away!”

After the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, Governor Morgan, of New York, was at the White House one day, when the President said: "I do not agree with those who say that slavery is dead. We are like whalers who have been long on a chase—we have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer, or, with one 'flop' of his tail, he will yet send us all into eternity!"

During a public "reception," a farmer, from one of the border counties of Virginia, told the President that the Union soldiers, in passing his farm, had helped themselves not only to hay, but his horse, and he hoped the President would urge the proper officer to consider his claim immediately.

Mr. Lincoln said that this reminded him of an old acquaintance of his, "Jack Chase," who used to be a lumberman on the Illinois, a steady, sober man, and the best raftsman on the river. It was quite a trick, twenty-five years ago, to take the logs over the rapids; but he was skilful with a raft, and always kept her straight in the channel

Finally a steamer was put on, and Jack was made captain of her. He always used to take the wheel, going through the rapids. One day when the boat was plunging and wallowing along the boiling current, and Jack's utmost vigilance was being exercised to keep her in the 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 !"

46

The President was once speaking about an attack made on him by the Committee on the Conduct of the War for a certain alleged blunder, or something worse, in the Southwest-the matter involved being one which had fallen directly under the observation of the officer to whom he was talking, who possessed official evidence completely upsetting all the conclusions of the Committee.

"Might it not be well for me," queried the officer, "to set this matter right in a letter to some paper, stating the facts as they actually transpired?"

“Oh; no,” replied the President, "at least, not now. If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop night as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so unt the end. If the cnd brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to any thing. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."

A gentleman was relating to the President how a friend of his had been driven away from New Orleans as a Unionist, and how, on his expulsion, when he asked to see the writ by which he was expeiled, the deputation which called on him told him that the Government had made up their minds to do nothing illegal, and so they had issued no illegal writs, and simply meant to make him go of his own free will. "Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "that reminds me of a hotel-keeper down at St. Louis, who boasted that he never had a death in his hotel, for whenever a guest was dying in his house he carried him out to die in the gutter."

One evening the President brought a couple of friends into the "State dining-room" to see my picture. Something was said, in the conversation that ensued, that "reminded" him of the following circumstance: "Judge ,” said he, “held the strongest ideas of rigid government and close construction that I ever met. It was said of uin, on one occasion, that he would hang a man for blowing his nose

in the street, but he would quash the indictment if it failed to specify which hand he blew it with!"

On one occasion, in the Executive chamber, there were present a number of gentlemen, among them Mr. Seward.

A point in the conversation suggesting the thought, Mr. Lincoln said: "Seward, you never heard, did you, how I earned my first dollar?" "No," said Mr. Seward. "Well," replied he, "I was about eighteen years of age. I belonged, you know, to what they call down South, the scrubs;' people who do not own slaves are nobody there. But we had succeeded in raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to sell.

"After much persuasion, I got the consent of mother to go, and constructed a little flatboat, large enough to take a barrel or two of things, that we had gathered, with myself and little bundle, down to New Orleans. A steamer was coming down the river. We have, you know, no wharves on the Western streams; and the custom was, if passengers were at any of the landings, for them to go out in a boat, the steamer stopping and taking them on board.

"I was contemplating my new flatboat, and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any particular, when two men came down to the shore in carriages with trunks, and looking at the different boats singled out mine, and asked, "Who owns this?' I answered, somewhat modestly, 'I do.' 'Will you,' said one of them, 'take us and our trunks out to the steamer?' 'Certainly,' said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earning something. I supposed that cach of them would give me two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flatboat, the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamboat.

"They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks, and put them on deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out that they had forgotten to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar, and threw it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. Gentlemen, you may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me a trifle; but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day-that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The world seemed wider and fairer before me. I was a more hopeful and confident being from that time."

In August, 1864, the President called for five hundred thousand more men. The country was much depressed. The rebels had, in comparatively small force, only a short time before, been to the very gates of Washington, and returned almost unharmed.

The Presidential election was impending. Many thought another call for men at such a time would injure, if not destroy, Mr. Lincoln's chances for re-election. A friend said as much to him one day, after the President had told him of his purpose to make such a call. "As to my re-election," replied Mr. Lincoln, "it matters not. We must have If I go down, I intend to go, like the Cumberland, with my colors flying!"

the men.

A gentleman was one day finding fault with the constant agitation in Congress of the slavery question. He remarked that, after the adoption of the Emancipation policy, he had hoped for something new.

“There was a man down in Maine," said the President, in reply, "who kept a grocery-store, and a lot of fellows used to loaf around that for their toddy. He only gave 'em New England rum, and they drank pretty considerable of it. But after a while they began to get tired of that, and kept asking for something new-something new-all the time. Well, one night, when the whole crowd were around, the grocer brought out his glasses, and says he, 'I've got something New for you to drink, boys, now.' 'Honor bright?' said they. Honor bright,' says he, and with that he sets out a jug. 'Thar,' says he, 'that's something new; it's New England rum!' says he. Now," remarked Mr. Lincoln, "I guess we're a good deal like that crowd, and Congress is a good deal like that store-keeper!"

About a week after the Chicago Convention, a gentleman from New York called upon the President, in company with the Assistant Secretary of War, Mr. Dana. In the course of conversation, the gentleman said: "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!"

On the occasion when the telegram from Cumberland Gap reached Mr. Lincoln that "firing was heard in the direction of Knoxville," he remarked that he was "glad of it." Some person present, who had the perils of Burnside's position uppermost in his mind, could not see why Mr. Lincoln should be glad of it, and so expressed himself. "Why, you see," responded the President, "it reminds me of Mistress