Abraham Lincoln’s Silly Biographers.
The process of making a saint out of Abraham Lincoln goes bravely on. His latest biographer, Mr. Hill, clears him of the charge of “telling stories just to amuse people.” Mr. Hill—a sober and worthy man, no doubt—produces a witness by the name of Ewing, who being duly sworn, deposes and says:
“I never heard Mr. Lincoln tell a story for its own sake or simply to raise a laugh. He used stories to illustrate a point, but the idea that he sat around and matched yarns like a commercial traveller is utterly false.”
Why should the Lincoln biographers strive and strain to establish the fact that HE NEVER “SAT AROUND AND MATCHED YARNS LIKE A COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER?”
Is it any disgrace to sit around, occasionally, and swap yarns, “like a commercial traveller?”
If so, the men who are TRULY RESPECTABLE are the dull fellows who can neither tell a joke, nor enjoy one. Some of the best and brightest men that ever lived have prided themselves upon their gifts in that very line. To be a good story-teller is to possess the golden key that unlocks almost every social door.
Daniel Webster revelled in a good story; so did Clay; so did Tom Corwin; so did Robert Toombs, and Alexander H. Stephens.
As a mental relaxation and recreation, there are, in fact, few things that serve better than “to sit around and match yarns like a commercial traveller.”
***
The truth about Lincoln is that he was a man, and a great man, but no saint.
The last time I was in New York (November, 1905), my friend, Hon. T. H. Tibbles, of Nebraska, was there, also, and we talked of Lincoln, whom Mr. Tibbles had known.
And one of the very things which Mr. Tibbles had seen and heard Mr. Lincoln do was “to sit around and match yarns like a commercial traveller.”
***
Mr. Tibbles told me how, being at a certain place, his attention was attracted by repeated bursts of loud laughter, coming from a certain room. His youthful curiosity being excited, he followed the sound to the room from which it came. The sight that met his eyes was this: Abraham Lincoln was sitting in a chair, with his big feet upon a table in front of him; around him were grouped a number of men, to whom Mr. Lincoln was telling side-splitting yarns.
Tibbles joined the audience and got his share of the fun.
What of it?
Does that lower Lincoln in any sensible man’s eyes?
No. Let the Miss Nancy brigade go off to one side and talk about the nebular hypothesis, or some other nice, well-bred subject. For my part, I would prefer, occasionally, “to sit around and match yarns like a commercial traveller.”
***
I asked Mr. Tibbles whether the stories that he heard Mr. Lincoln telling were smutty.
At some future time, when I find, after a careful field-glass scrutiny of the horizon, that I have no other row on hand, and am feeling the need of one very badly, I am going to tell you Tibbles’ answer.