“The merchant agreed to the proposition, promised the fellow he would pay him well for the two carloads. Two days passed, then three, and finally two weeks were gone before the fellow showed up again, carrying a small basket. He looked weary and ‘done up,’ and he wasn’t talkative a bit. He threw the basket on the counter with the remark, ‘There’s your frogs.’
“‘You haven’t two carloads in that basket, have you?’ inquired the merchant.
“‘No,’ was the reply, ‘and there ain’t no two carloads in all this blasted world.’
“‘I thought you said there were at least ten millions of ‘em in that marsh near you, according to the noise they made,’ observed the merchant. ‘Your people couldn’t sleep because of ‘em.’
“‘Well,’ said the fellow, ‘accordin’ to the noise they made, there was, I thought, a hundred million of ‘em, but when I had waded and swum that there marsh day and night fer two blessed weeks, I couldn’t harvest but six. There’s two or three left yet, an’ the marsh is as noisy as it uster be. We haven’t catched up on any of our lost sleep yet. Now, you can have these here six, an’ I won’t charge you a cent fer ‘em.’
“You can see by this little yarn,” remarked the President, “that these boisterous people make too much noise in proportion to their numbers.”
KEEP PEGGING AWAY.
Being asked one time by an “anxious” visitor as to what he would do in certain contingencies—provided the rebellion was not subdued after three or four years of effort on the part of the Government?
“Oh,” replied the President, “there is no alternative but to keep ‘pegging’ away!”