“Stranger, if this is really true, shoot me. If I thought I was uglier than you, I’d want to die.”
Senator Voorhees of Indiana said that he once heard Lincoln defeat a windy little pettifogging lawyer by telling a story. After showing how the fellow’s arguments were only empty words, he said, “He can’t help it. When his oratory begins it exhausts all his force of mind. The moment he begins to talk his mental operations cease. I never knew of but one thing that was similar to my friend in that respect. Back in the days when I was a keel boatman I became acquainted with a puffy little steamboat, which used to bustle and wheeze its way up and down the Sangamon River. It had a fivefoot boiler and a seven-foot whistle, so that every time it whistled that boat stopped.”
Even in business Lincoln could not refrain from expressing himself in a humorous way. A New York firm wrote him to know the financial reliability of one of their customers. He replied:
“I am well acquainted with your customer and know his circumstances. First, he has a wife and baby: these ought to be worth not less than $50,000 to any man. Secondly, he has an office in which there is a table worth $1.50, and three chairs at, say, $1.00.
“Last of all, there is in one corner a large rathole, which will bear looking into.
“Respectfully,
“A. Lincoln.”
All the great contemporaries who heard Lincoln tell stories agree that he never told one merely for the sake of the story or to raise a laugh, but always to carry some useful point or impress an idea. The aptness and wit of his stories often were more convincing than any argument or logic. We may be assured that any other kind of a Lincoln story is spurious, and none of his.
He had a case where two men had got into a fight. It was proven that Lincoln’s man had merely defended himself against the other’s attack. But the other attorney insisted that Lincoln’s man could have defended himself less violently.
Lincoln closed out the argument and won his case with a story.
“That reminds me,” said Lincoln, “of the man who was attacked by a farmer’s dog. He defended himself so violently with a pitchfork that he killed the dog.
“‘What made you kill my dog?’ demanded the angry farmer.