The process of making a saint out of Abraham Lincoln goes bravely on. His latest biographer, Mr. Hill, clears him of the charge of “telling stories just to amuse people.” Mr. Hill—a sober and worthy man, no doubt—produces a witness by the name of Ewing, who being duly sworn, deposes and says:
“I never heard Mr. Lincoln tell a story for its own sake or simply to raise a laugh. He used stories to illustrate a point, but the idea that he sat around and matched yarns like a commercial traveller is utterly false.”
Why should the Lincoln biographers strive and strain to establish the fact that HE NEVER “SAT AROUND AND MATCHED YARNS LIKE A COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER?”
Is it any disgrace to sit around, occasionally, and swap yarns, “like a commercial traveller?”
If so, the men who are TRULY RESPECTABLE are the dull fellows who can neither tell a joke, nor enjoy one. Some of the best and brightest men that ever lived have prided themselves upon their gifts in that very line. To be a good story-teller is to possess the golden key that unlocks almost every social door.
Daniel Webster revelled in a good story; so did Clay; so did Tom Corwin; so did Robert Toombs, and Alexander H. Stephens.
As a mental relaxation and recreation, there are, in fact, few things that serve better than “to sit around and match yarns like a commercial traveller.”
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The truth about Lincoln is that he was a man, and a great man, but no saint.
The last time I was in New York (November, 1905), my friend, Hon. T. H. Tibbles, of Nebraska, was there, also, and we talked of Lincoln, whom Mr. Tibbles had known.