Mr. Lincoln chuckled, as he added: “Bless her dear soul, she’ll never find out how I got the better of her; and if she does, she will forgive me. Come around to-morrow, boys, and get your twenty-five dollars.”[iv-52]
Fallible human nature, viewing this man’s uncompromising truthfulness with perhaps a trace of chagrin, may derive some consolation from the thought that now and then, when domestic skies were overcast, even he sought refuge in equivocation. His sin, on one occasion at least, speedily found him out, as he himself confessed by means of the characteristically frank letter which follows:—
Private.
Springfield, Feb. 20, 1857.
John E. Rosette, Esq.
Dear Sir:—Your note about the little paragraph in the Republican was received yesterday; since when, till now, I have been too unwell to answer it. I had not supposed you wrote, or approved it. The whole originated in mistake. You know, by the conversation with me, that I thought the establishment of the paper unfortunate; but I always expected to throw no obstacle in its way, and to patronize it to the extent of taking and paying for one copy. When the paper was first brought to my house, my wife said to me, ‘Now, are you going to take another worthless little paper?’ I said to her evasively, I had not directed the paper to be left. From this, in my absence, she sent the message to the carrier. This is the whole story.
Yours truly,
A. Lincoln.[iv-53]
Meanwhile, there were other, far heavier drafts upon that meager purse. Its strings reached all the way to the little cabin on Goose Nest Prairie, in Coles County, where, after repeated migrations, Thomas and Sarah Lincoln had taken up their last abode. The family, or what remained of it, was not more prosperous then, we need hardly add, than of yore. In fact, financial embarrassments appear to have increased, and frequent were the calls upon Abraham for aid. How he responded may be inferred from what he once wrote to his stepbrother, John D. Johnston: “You already know I desire that neither father nor mother shall be in want of any comfort, either in health or sickness, while they live.”[iv-54]
A fitting pendant is furnished by a letter which had been sent to Thomas Lincoln, himself, some years previous. It read:—
Washington, December 24, 1848.