NEVER SUED A CLIENT.
If a client did not pay, Lincoln did not believe in suing for the fee. When a fee was paid him his custom was to divide the money into two equal parts, put one part into his pocket, and the other into an envelope labeled “Herndon’s share.”
THE LINCOLN HOUSEHOLD GOODS.
It is recorded that when “Abe” was born, the household goods of his father consisted of a few cooking utensils, a little bedding, some carpenter tools, and four hundred gallons of the fierce product of the mountain still.
RUNNING THE MACHINE.
One of the cartoon-posters issued by the Democratic National Campaign Committee in the fall of 1864 is given here. It had the legend, “Running the Machine,” printed beneath; the “machine” was Secretary Chase’s “Greenback Mill,” and the mill was turning out paper money by the million to satisfy the demands of greedy contractors. “Uncle Abe” is pictured as about to tell one of his funny stories, of which the scene “reminds” him; Secretary of War Stanton is receiving a message from the front, describing a great victory, in which one prisoner and one gun were taken; Secretary of State Seward is handing an order to a messenger for the arrest of a man who had called him a “humbug,” the habeas corpus being suspended throughout the Union at that period; Secretary of the Navy Welles—the long-haired, long-bearded man at the head of the table—is figuring out a naval problem; at the side of the table, opposite “Uncle Abe,” are seated two Government contractors, shouting for “more greenbacks,” and at the extreme left is Secretary of the Treasury Fessenden (who succeeded Chase when the latter was made Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court), who complains that he cannot satisfy the greed of the contractors for “more greenbacks,” although he is grinding away at the mill day and night.