They made a wager of a new hat--the Sunday hat of beaver being still costly.
Greene was betting unfairly--on a sure thing--as he had seen his friend do what he asserted, all but the drinking flourish. Lincoln was averse to the wagering at all, but to help his friend to the hat, he consented to the feat. He passed through it, lifting the cask between his two hands and holding the spigot-hole to his lips while he imbibed a mouthful. As he was slowly lowering the barrel to the floor, the winner exclaimed jubilately:
"I knew you would do it; but I never knew you to drink whisky before!"
The barrel was stood on the floor, when the drinker calmly expelled the mouthful of its contents, and drolly remarked:
"And I have not drunk that, you see!"
As a return for his action to win the hat, he asked Greene not to wager any more--a resolve which he took to oblige him.
WORSTED IN A HORSE-TRADE.
Until Lincoln--seeing that his decisions created enemies, whichever way they fell--renounced being umpire for horse-racing and the like events, momentous on the border, he officiated in many such pastimes. Before he found them "all wrong," he had a horsy acquaintance in a judge. This was at a time when he was practising law, which involved riding on circuit, as the court went round to give sittings like the ancient English justices, attending assizes. During such excursions, they played practical jokes, naturally. Among their singular contests was a bet of twenty-five dollars--as forfeit if, in horse-swapping, the loser rejected the horse offered on even terms with the one he "put in." Neither was to know anything of the equine paragon until simultaneously exhibited.
As good sport was indicated where two such arrant jokers were in conflict, a vast throng filled the tavern-yard where the pair were to draw conclusions. At the appointed hour the court functionary dragged upon the scene a most dilapidated simulacrum of man's noblest conquest--blind, spavined, lean as Pharaoh's kind, creeking in every joint--at the same time that his fellow wagerer carried on under his long arm a carpenter's horse--gashed with adze and broadax, bored with the augur, trenched with saw and draw-knife--singed, paint, and tar-spotted, crazy in each leg of the three still adhering--in short, justifying Lincoln to reverse his cry at viewing the real animal:
"Jedge (for judge), this is the first time I ever got the worst of it in a hoss-trade!"