While riding between the court towns, Menard and Fulton Counties, Illinois, Lincoln rode knee to knee with an old settler who admitted that he was going to Lewiston to have some "lawing" out with a neighbor, also an old-timer. The young practitioner already preached, as a motto, that there would always be litigation enough and again exerted to throw oil on the riled water.
"Why, Uncle Tommy, this neighbor has been a tolerable neighbor to you nigh onto fifteen year and you get along in hunk part of the time, don't 'ee?"
The rancantankerous man admitted as much.
"Well, now, you see this nag of mine? He isn't as good a horse as I want to straddle and I sometimes get out of patience with him, but I know his faults as well as his p'ints. He goes fairly well as hosses go, and it might take me a long while to git used to another hoss' faults. For, like men, all hosses hev faults. You and Uncle Jimmy ought to put up with each other as man and his steed put up with one another; see?"
"I reckon you are about right, Abe!"
And he went on to town, but not to "law."
LINCOLN'S PUNS ON PROPER NAMES.
Though as far back as Doctor Johnson, punning was regarded as obsolete, it was still prevalent in the United States and so up to a late date. Mr. Lincoln was addicted to it.
Mr. Frank B. Carpenter was some six months at the presidential mansion engaged on the historical painting of "The President and the Cabinet Signing the Emancipation Act," when the joke passed that he had come in there a Carpenter and would go out a cabinet-maker. An usher repeated it as from the fountain-head of witticism there.
At a reception, a gentleman addressed him, saying: "I presume, Mr. President, you have forgotten me?"