o the male occupant of the house, who
stood idly leaning upon the gate.

"'Yep,' was the short answer.

"'How were they going?'

"'Purty fast.'

"'What was their position when you saw them?'

"'Well,' replied the farmer, in a most exasperatingly deliberate way,
'the dog was a leetle bit ahead.'

"Now, gentlemen," concluded the President, "that's the position in which
you'll find most of these bragging generals when they get into a fight
with the enemy. That's why I don't like military orators."

"ABE'S" FIGHT WITH NEGROES.

When Lincoln was nineteen years of age, he went to work for a Mr.
Gentry, and, in company with Gentry's son, took a flatboat load of
provisions to New Orleans. At a plantation six miles below Baton Rouge,
while the boat was tied up to the shore in the dead hours of the night,
and Abe and Allen were fast asleep in the bed, they were startled by
footsteps on board. They knew instantly that it was a gang of negroes
come to rob and perhaps murder them. Allen, thinking to frighten the
negroes, called out, "Bring guns, Lincoln, and shoot them!" Abe came
without the guns, but fell among the negroes with a huge bludgeon and
belabored them most cruelly, following them onto the bank. They rushed
back to their boat and hastily put out into the stream. It is said that
Lincoln received a scar in this tussle which he carried with him to his
grave. It was on this trip that he saw the workings of slavery for the
first time. The sight of New Orleans was like a wonderful panorama
to his eyes, for never before had he seen wealth, beauty, fashion
and culture. He returned home with new and larger ideas and stronger
opinions of right and justice.

NOISE LIKE A TURNIP.

"Every man has his own peculiar and particular way of getting at
and doing things," said President Lincoln one day, "and he is often
criticised because that way is not the one adopted by others. The great
idea is to accomplish what you set out to do. When a man is successful
in whatever he attempts, he has many imitators, and the methods used are
not so closely scrutinized, although no man who is of good intent will
resort to mean, underhanded, scurvy tricks.

"That reminds me of a fellow out in Illinois, who had better luck in
getting prairie chickens than any one in the neighborhood. He had a
rusty old gun no other man dared to handle; he never seemed to exert
himself, being listless and indifferent when out after game, but he
a