Uncle Abe replied that "he could'nt say that he did." The gentleman who addressed him then tried to jog the executive memory a little by mentioning a circumstance or two connected with the Major's history. Finally Uncle Abe remembered him very well—which fact he stated in the following graphic language: "O yes, I know who you mean. It's that turkey egg faced fellow that you'd think did'nt know as much as a last year's bird's nest." This was the very individual referred to. It will be seen that Uncle Abe has other fortes than statesmanship—and that of a physiognoist is one of them.
The Concrete vs. the Abstract.
Dick Yates, the jolly Governor of the Suckers, tells that he called on Uncle Abe one morning when he was trying to get the 88,000 "Hundredazers" accepted, and that during their interview Uncle Abe remarked: "Yates, I'll tell you the difference between the concrete and the abstract. When the Senate passed a resolution requesting me not to appoint any more Brigadiers, as the vacancies were all full, that's the concrete. But when a Senator comes up here with a long petition and a longer face, requesting me to make a brigadier out of some scallawag of a friend of his, as it happens every day—I call that the abstract."
Symptoms of Civilization.
Uncle Abe and his chums were wrecked and swamped once on a trip to New Orleans, and having waded ashore, were in search of shelter and refreshment, without much prospect of success, in a thickly timbered bottom. They had traveled through the forest a long distance, and were in despair of finding any human habitation, when they discovered a negro hanging on the projecting limb of a tree. "The joy," said Abe, when telling the adventure, "which this cheering view excited, cannot be described, for it convinced us that we were in a civilized country."