"NO HEAPING COALS OF FIRE ON THAT HEAD."
The wantonly cruel experiment of testing the sensitiveness in reptiles armored, passed into a proverb out West in pioneer times. Besides carving initials and dates on the shell of land tortoises, boys would fling the creatures against tree or rock to see it perish with its exposed and lacerated body, or literally place burning coals on the back. In such cases Lincoln, a boy in his teens, but a redoubtable young giant, would not only interfere vocally, but with his arms, if needed.
"Don't terrapins have feelings?" he inquired.
The torturer did not know the right answer, and, persisting in the treatment, had the shingle wrenched from his hand and the cinders stamped out, while the sufferer was allowed to go away.
"Well, feelings or none, he won't be burned any more while I am around!"
He did not always have to resort to force in his corrections, as he obtained the title of "Peacemaker" by other means, and the spell in his tongue, at that age.
STUMPING THE STUMP-SPEAKER.
When Lincoln became a man and, divorced from his father's grasping tyranny, set up as a field-hand, he lightened the labor in Menard County by orating to his mates, and they gladly suspended their tasks to listen to him recite what he had read and invented--or, rather, adapted to their circumscribed understanding. Besides mimicry of the itinerant preachers, he imitated the electioneering advocates of all parties and local politics. One day, one such educator collected the farmers and their help around him to eulogize some looming-up candidate, when a cousin and admirer of young Lincoln cast a damper on him, crying out, with general approval, that Abe could talk him dry! Accepting the challenge, the professional spellbinder allowed his place on the stump of the cottonwood to be held by the raw Demosthenes. To his astonishment the country lad did display much fluency, intelligence, and talent for the craft. Frankly the stranger complimented him and wished him well in a career which he recommended him to adopt. From this cheering, Lincoln proceeded to speak in public--his limited public--"talking on all subjects till the questions were worn slick, greasy, and threadbare."
MAKING THE WOOL, NOT FEATHERS, FLY.
The "export trade" of the Indiana farmers was with New Orleans, the goods being carried on flatboats. The traffic called for a larger number of resolute, hardy, and honest men, as, besides the vicissitudes of fickle navigation, was the peril from thieves. Abraham early made acquaintance with this course as he accompanied his father in such a venture down the great river. Then passed apprenticeship, he built a boat for Gentry--merchant of Gentryville--and "sailed" it, with the storekeeper's son Allen as bow-hand or first officer. He and his crew of one started from the Ohio River landing and safely reached the Crescent City--safely as to cargo and bodies, but not without a narrow escape. At Baton Rouge, a little ahead of the haven, the boat was tied up at a plantation, and the two were asleep, when they became objects of an attack from a river pest--a band of refugee negroes and similar lawless rogues.