When asked how he was, during the reception which followed his arrival there, the President said, as related by General Horace Porter:
"'I am not feeling very well. I got pretty badly shaken up on the bay coming down, and am not altogether over it yet.'
"'Let me send for a bottle of champagne for you, Mr. President,' said a staff-officer, 'that's the best remedy I know of for sea-sickness.'
"'No, no, my young friend,' replied the President, 'I've seen many a man in my time seasick ashore from drinking that very article.'
"That was the last time any one screwed up sufficient courage to offer him wine."
"THE UNDER DOG"
Some people are kinder to dumb animals—is it because they are dumb?—than to their relatives. Many are the stories of Lincoln's tenderness to beasts and birds. But his kindness did not stop there, nor with his brothers and sisters in white. He recognized his close relationship with the black man, and the bitterest name his enemies called him—worse in their minds than "fool," "clown," "imbecile" or "gorilla"—was a "Black Republican." That terrible phobia against the negro only enlisted Abraham Lincoln's sympathies the more. He appeared in court in behalf of colored people, time and again. The more bitter the hatred and oppression of others, the more they needed his sympathetic help, the more certain they were to receive it.
"My sympathies are with the under dog," said Mr. Lincoln, one day, "though it is often that dog that starts the fuss."
The fact that the poor fellow may have brought the trouble upon himself did not make him forfeit Abraham Lincoln's sympathy. That was only a good lesson to him to "Look out and do better next time!"
THE QUESTION OF EMANCIPATION