Lincoln made his first speech when he was a mere boy, going barefoot, his trousers held up by one suspender, and his shock of hair sticking through a hole in the crown of his cheap straw hat.
“Abe,” in company with Dennis Hanks, attended a political meeting, which was addressed by a typical stump speaker—one of those loud-voiced fellows who shouted at the top of his voice and waved his arms wildly.
At the conclusion of the speech, which did not meet the views either of “Abe” or Dennis, the latter declared that “Abe” could make a better speech than that. Whereupon he got a dry-goods box and called on “Abe” to reply to the campaign orator.
Lincoln threw his old straw hat on the ground, and, mounting the dry-goods box, delivered a speech which held the attention of the crowd and won him considerable applause. Even the campaign orator admitted that it was a fine speech and answered every point in his own “oration.”
Dennis Hanks, who thought “Abe” was about the greatest man that ever lived, was delighted, and he often told how young “Abe” got the better of the trained campaign speaker.
“ABE WANTED NO SNEAKIN’ ‘ROUND.”
It was in 1830, when “Abe” was just twenty-one years of age, that the Lincoln family moved from Gentryville, Indiana, to near Decatur, Illinois, their household goods being packed in a wagon drawn by four oxen driven by “Abe.”
The winter previous the latter had “worked” in a country store in Gentryville and before undertaking the journey he invested all the money he had—some thirty dollars—in notions, such as needles, pins, thread, buttons and other domestic necessities. These he sold to families along the route and made a profit of about one hundred per cent.
This mercantile adventure of his youth “reminded” the President of a very clever story while the members of the Cabinet were one day solemnly debating a rather serious international problem. The President was in the minority, as was frequently the case, and he was “in a hole,” as he afterwards expressed it. He didn’t want to argue the points raised, preferring to settle the matter in a hurry, and an apt story was his only salvation.