"So it is your notion that we whipped the rebels and then ran away from them!"
HE "SKEWED" THE LINE
When a surveyor, Mr. Lincoln first platted the town of Petersburg, Ill. Some twenty or thirty years afterward the property-owners along one of the outlying streets had trouble in fixing their boundaries. They consulted the official plat and got no relief. A committee was sent to Springfield to consult the distinguished surveyor, but he failed to recall anything that would give them aid, and could only refer them to the record. The dispute therefore went into the courts. While the trial was pending, an old Irishman named McGuire, who had worked for some farmer during the summer, returned to town for the winter. The case being mentioned in his presence, he promptly said: "I can tell you all about it. I helped carry the chain when Abe Lincoln laid out this town. Over there where they are quarreling about the lines, when he was locating the street, he straightened up from his instrument and said: 'If I run that street right through, it will cut three or four feet off the end of ——'s house. It's all he's got in the world and he could never get another. I reckon it won't hurt anything out here if I skew the line a little and miss him.'"
The line was "skewed," and hence the trouble, and more testimony furnished as to Lincoln's abounding kindness of heart, that would not willingly harm any human being.
"HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF THIS PLACE?"
"It seems to me," remarked the President one day while reading over some of the appealing telegrams sent to the War Department by General McClellan, "that McClellan has been wandering around and has sort of got lost. He's been hollering for help ever since he went South—wants somebody to come to his deliverance and get him out of the place he's got into.
"He reminds me of the story of a man out in Illinois who, in company with a number of friends, visited the State penitentiary. They wandered all through the institution and saw everything, but just about the time to depart this particular man became separated from his friends and couldn't find his way out.
"He roamed up and down one corridor after another, becoming more desperate all the time, when, at last, he came across a convict who was looking out from between the bars of his cell-door. Here was salvation at last. Hurrying up to the prisoner he hastily asked: