"Well, Mr. Garrison, when you first went to Baltimore, you could not get out of prison--but this second time you could not get in!"
"THEM THREE FELLERS AGIN!"
The gamut of possible atrocities in connection with fulfilment of the threats of secession being run through the rumors became stale and flat. Lincoln, receiving one deputation of alarmists with considerable calm, no doubt thought to excuse it by saying:
"That reminds me of the story of the schoolboy. He found great difficulty in pronouncing the names of the three children in the fiery furnace. Yet his teacher had drilled him thoroughly in 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,' so that, one day, he purposely took the same lesson in Bible reading, and managed to have the boy read the passages containing these names again. As the dull pupil came to them he stopped, looked up, and said:
"'Teacher, there's them three fellers ag'in!'"
LINCOLN THE GREAT AND LINCOLN THE LITTLE.
In 1856, the new Republican party tested its strength by offering a ticket: General Fremont, popular through his invasion of California and Rocky Mountain exploration, was selected as the presidential nominee, with Dayton as vice. But during the balloting, Lincoln was opposed to the latter, and received over a hundred votes. This news was despatched to Illinois as a compliment to her "favorite son."
But on going to congratulate "our Lincoln," the deputation found him easy and incredulous on the felicitation.
"You are barking up the wrong tree, neighbors," he said gravely; "that must be the great Lincoln--of Massachusetts."
There was a Levi Lincoln, to whom he had been introduced as a form and as a kinsman of the Massachusetts Lincolns. So the namesake's mistake in modesty was pardonable in one who studied the train of politics most thoroughly since he had said he would be President of these United States. It was in his teens, but the saying is common property of young America, and it is more notable that before he left Indiana, and early in his new and unalterable one in Illinois, his astounded admirers prophesied the same goal; it is a fact that his own hand proves; that in 1854, he says, "I have really got it into my head to be United States senator." [Footnote: Nevertheless, a friend, Speed or Herndon, says, a year or two later, that Lincoln had no more founded idea that he would be President than Emperor of China. It may be permitted to believe that no man is a confidant to his valet or friend.]--(Letter to Joseph Gillespie, preserved in Missouri Historical Society Library.)