The Lincoln Story Book / A Judicious Collection of the Best Stories and Anecdotes of the Great President, Many Appearing Here for the First Time in Book Form

by Unknown

THE SNAKE SIMILE.

"If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it. But if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. Much more if I found it abed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn contract not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. But--if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide." --(Speech by Abraham Lincoln at New York Cooper Institute, and repeated through Connecticut, 1860.)