A mother’s alarm.
A lady was lamenting to the president that her only son had gone to the war, and asked him what she had better do. “Oh,” he replied, “you can’t do better than buy him a life preserver.”
Punning again.
Governor Seymour telegraphed to Lincoln during the late riots in New York City, that there was no occasion to act so harshly and drag so many citizens off to prison. The reply was that “he (the president) thought quite differently, and that he should never be content till he’d see more (Seymour) there.”
Idol.
“There you are,” said Mrs. Lincoln one day to her husband—at your idol again—alluding to his well-known love of tobacco. “Yes, my dear,” was his reply, “I am burning it.”
A Word for the Irish.
A lieutenant told the president that of all the men that composed his regiment, the Irish gave him the greatest amount of uneasiness. “Sir,” was Lincoln’s reply, “our enemies, the rebels, make the same complaint.”