ally fixed up a cartridge with
a long fuse, and put the cartridge in a piece of meat, and then sat down
on a fence and called the dog, one of them holding the fuse in his
hand. The dog swallowed the meat, cartridge and all, and stood choking,
when one of them touched off the fuse. There was a loud report. Sykes
came out of the house, and found the ground was strewed with pieces of
the dog. He picked up the biggest piece that he could find--a portion of
the back with the tail still hanging to it--and said:

"'Well, I guess that will never be of much account again--_as a
dog_.'--'I guess that Pemberton's forces will never amount to much
again--as an army.' By this time the delegation were looking for their
hats."

Like stories followed among the merry foresters. One of them told
another "That reminds me"--how that two boys had been pursued by a small
but vicious dog, and one of them had caught and held him by the tail
while the other ran up a tree. At last the boy who was holding the dog
became tired and knew not what to do, and cried out:

"Jim!"

"What say?"

"Come down."

"What for?"

"To help me let go of the dog."

This story, also, whatever may have been the date of it, President
Lincoln used to tell amid the perplexities of the war. In the darkest
times of his life at the White House his mind used to return for
illustration to the stories told at this backwoods smithy, and at the
country stores that he afterward came to visit at Gentryville, Indiana,
and New Salem, Illinois.

He delighted in the blacksmith's own stories and jokes. The man's name
was John Baldwin. He was the Homer of Gentryville, as the village
portion of this vast unsettled portion of country was called. Dennis
Hanks, Abraham Lincoln's cousin, who frequented the smithy, was also a
natural story-teller. The stories which had their origin here evolved
and grew, and became known in all the rude cabins. Then, when Abraham
Lincoln became President, his mind went back to the quaint smithy in the
cool, free woods, and to the country stores, and he told these stories
all over again. It seemed restful to his mind to wander back to old
Indiana and Illinois.

The cloud grew. The air darkened. There was an occasional rustle of wind
in the tree-tops.

"It's comin'," said the blacksmith. "Now, Johnnie Kongapod, you tell us
the story. Tell us how Aunt Olive frightened ye when you went to pilot
her off to the camp-meetin'."

"No," said Johnnie Ko