t of the
encounter. The aggressor, to get even, had the one who thrashed him
tried in our Circuit Court on a charge of an assault and battery. Mr.
Lincoln defended, and told the jury that his client was in the fix of
a man who, in going along the highway with a pitchfork on his shoulder,
was attacked by a fierce dog that ran out at him from a farmer's
dooryard. In parrying off the brute with the fork, its prongs stuck into
the brute and killed him.

"'What made you kill my dog?' said the farmer.

"'What made him try to bite me?'

"'But why did you not go at him with the other end of the pitchfork?'

"'Why did he not come after me with his other end?'

"At this Mr. Lincoln whirled about in his long arms an imaginary dog,
and pushed its tail end toward the jury. This was the defensive plea of
'son assault demesne'--loosely, that 'the other fellow brought on the
fight,'--quickly told, and in a way the dullest mind would grasp and
retain."

LET SIX SKUNKS GO.

The President had decided to select a new War Minister, and the Leading
Republican Senators thought the occasion was opportune to change the
whole seven Cabinet ministers. They, therefore, earnestly advised him to
make a clean sweep, and select seven new men, and so restore the waning
confidence of the country.

The President listened with patient courtesy, and when the Senators had
concluded, he said, with a characteristic gleam of humor in his eye:

"Gentlemen, your request for a change of the whole Cabinet because I
have made one change reminds me of a story I once heard in Illinois,
of a farmer who was much troubled by skunks. His wife insisted on his
trying to get rid of them.

"He loaded his shotgun one moonlight night and awaited developments.
After some time the wife heard the shotgun go off, and in a few minutes
the farmer entered the house.

"'What luck have you?' asked she.

"'I hid myself behind the wood-pile,' said the old man, 'with the
shotgun pointed towards the hen roost, and before long there appeared
not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, killed one, and he
raised such a fearful smell that I concluded it was best to let the
other six go."'

The Senators laughed and retired.

HOW HE GOT BLACKSTONE.

The following story was told by Mr. Lincoln to Mr. A. J. Conant, the
artist, who painted his portrait in Springfield in 1860:

"One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my
store with a