Why Lincoln Laughed

by Russell H. Conwell

Then the President asked me how I, as a poor farmer’s boy, got along at Yale. I told him I taught music in Yale to earn part of my living—dug potatoes in the afternoon, and taught music in the evening. Then he got up and walked up and down the room with his hands behind him, while he gave me quite a discourse on his opinion of music, and especially of church music.

He said the inconsistency of church music was something that astonished him: that if you go to any place other than a church the music is always appropriate for the place and time. In the theater, for example, they sing songs which have some connection with the acting. (Perhaps that example would not apply to-day.) But in church very often there did not seem to be any relation whatever between what the congregation or the choir sings and the sermon. Then he told me about some “highfalutin’ songs” he had heard in church, which he said would be ridiculous if it was not in church; he was disgusted with the lack of sacred art and of appropriateness in church music. He finished by saying that he did not favor “dance music at a funeral.” There is a good deal of common sense in that!

I do not now recall just how the subject was introduced, but Lincoln talked to me about dreams, and he said that while he could not see any scientific reason for believing in dreams, nevertheless that he did in a measure believe in them, although he could not explain why. He said that they had undeniably influenced him.

Then he spoke of dreams he had “since the war came on,” which had influenced him a great deal. He said, “There might not be much in dreams, but when I dream we have been defeated it puts me on my nerve to watch out and see how things are. Men may say dreams are of no account, but they are suggestive to me, and in that respect of great account.”

When the President spoke of the people who were waiting to see him, I said:

“No doubt many of them, like myself, are strangers to you. How do you select those you will let in when you can’t see them all?”

He replied that he decided a good deal by names, and then he told me what seemed a good point to remember, that he had trained his memory in his youth by determining to remember people’s faces and names together. This he had done when he was first elected to the legislature in Illinois. He realized at once when he got into the legislature that he could not make a speech like the rest of “those fellows,” college people, but he could get a personal acquaintance and great influence if he would remember everybody’s face and everybody’s name; and so he said he had acted upon the plan of carrying a memorandum book around with him and setting down carefully the name of each man he met, and then making a little outline sketch with his pencil of some feature of the man—his ears, nose, shoulder, or something which would help him to remember.

Lincoln then told me a story about James G. Blaine when the latter was first elected to Congress. Blaine afterward repudiated this story, but it serves to illustrate Lincoln’s thought none the less. He said that Blaine hired a private secretary to help him out in remembering people. His system was to have the secretary meet all those who entered the reception room and ask their names, where they lived, what families they belonged to, and all the information that could be gained about them in a social way. Then, according to the story, the secretary ran around to the back door to Mr. Blaine’s private office and gave him a full memorandum about his callers. A few minutes later, when the visitor was ushered in, the secretary told him to “walk right in to see Mr. Blaine.”

He would say in the most casual manner: “Mr. Blaine is in there. You can go right in.”

Mr. Blaine would get up, shake hands with the man, ask him how his relations were, how long it had been since he was in the legislature, whether his wife’s brother had been successful in the West, etc., until the visitor came to be perfectly astounded.