ment of the rest.

He went swimming, warm evenings, with the boys, and ran races, jumped
and wrestled at noon-times, which was supposed to be given up to eating
and resting. He was "the life" of the husking-bee and barn raising, and
was always present, often as a judge because of his humor, fairness and
tact, at horse races. He engaged heartily in every kind of "manly sport"
which did not entail unnecessary suffering upon helpless animals.

Coon hunting, however, was an exception. The coon was a pest and a
plague to the farmer, so it should be got rid of. He once told the
following story:

THE LITTLE YELLOW "COON DOG"

"My father had a little yellow house dog which invariably gave the alarm
if we boys undertook to slip away unobserved after night had set in--as
we sometimes did--to go coon hunting. One night my brother, John
Johnston, and I, with the usual complement of boys required for a
successful coon hunt, took the insignificant little cur with us.

"We located the coveted coon, killed him, and then in a sporting vein,
sewed the coon skin on the little dog.

"It struggled vigorously during the operation of sewing on, and when
released made a bee-line for home. Some larger dogs on the way, scenting
coon, tracked the little animal home and apparently mistaking him for a
real coon, speedily demolished him. The next morning, father found,
lying in his yard, the lifeless remains of yellow 'Joe,' with strong
circumstantial evidence, in the form of fragments of coon skin, against
us.

"Father was much incensed at his death, but as John and I, scantily
protected from the morning wind, stood shivering in the doorway, we felt
assured that little yellow Joe would never again be able to sound the
alarm of another coon hunt."

THE "CHIN FLY" AS AN INCENTIVE TO WORK

While he was President, Mr. Lincoln told Henry J. Raymond, the founder
of the New York _Times_, the following story of an experience he had
about this time, while working with his stepbrother in a cornfield:

"Raymond," said he, "you were brought up on a farm, were you not? Then
you know what a 'chin fly' is. My brother and I were plowing corn once,
I driving the horse and he holding the plow. The horse was lazy, but on
one occasion he 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 the horse and I knocked it off.
My brother asked me