The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1894-01-04
"REMINISCENCES OF LINCOLN.
His Ungainliness. His Humor and VNi
Forbearance for towards.

mo; he wasn't handsome. And vet
there was nothing unpleasant, nothing
you wouldn't quickly like, in Lincoln's
looks. He was swarthy as an Indian,
with shock of why, jet-back hair,
which fell in all directions and delied
combs and brushes to the death. His
eyebrows carried out the shaggy eff
feet. while his bright, keen eyes were
gray.
"Lincoln's personal courage had no
limit. He was afraid of nothing on
earth. He received. | know. as many
as half a dozen letters every week
threatening assassination. He never
needed them and seldom referred to
them. He went about as freely as
Grover Cleveland does now. He would
get into the saddle and canter out to
the Soldiers Home, six miles, and an
assassin could have picked him off
with rifle at every step of the way.
Lincoln never appeared TO have the
slightest fear of it. Stanton used 10
get scared and put guards around Lin
coin, but the latter only laughed at it.
He had great laugh-a high, mu-
steal tenor-and when he had listened
to or told story which particularly
pleased him he would walk up and
down the room. with one hand on the
small of his back and the other rub
bling his hair in all directions, and
make things ring with laughter.
Lincoln has great fame as a story
teller. and yet the truth isn't half told.
First and last, he told thousands and
thousands of stories. He was a we'll
spring of anecdote. Yet, under all his
humor and all his laughter he was ten
der, sensitive, romantic, ofttimes sad.
He appeared hard and practical, and
yet no man ever lived who needed and
craved sympathy more than Lincoln.
He was strongly social in his nature,
and liked people rather than places.
Like all men of the highest courage,
fearing nobody, he hated none. He
would oppose a man to the death, but
would never hate him.
while Lincoln was fearless in his
own nature, he had the keenest for
bearance for the timidity of others
He would never consent to shoot a sol
der for cowardice. He called them
leg cases
sanction the shooting of a man for
running away in battle, he said to
me once. i won't do it. a man can't
help being coward any more than he
coHld help a humpback, if he were
born with one Then, turning to me
again, he sad voorhees,, were you
ever scared?'
q confessed that / had some little
experience that way.
$50 have l. said Lincoln, laughing,
and just know what it means. And
in any contest or controversy which
arises between the head and the heels,
| never knew the heels to get anything
but the best of it. No, sir; they needn't
send any leg cases TO me at all. I'll
never order a man shot for any such
offense.'
"Once, when l was up to the white
house to see him about something, he
turned to me with a pathetic look of
anxious pain and said: voorhees,,
doesn't it seem strange that | should
be here-I, a man who couldn't cut
chickens head off, with blood running
all around me?'
He was fond of certain homely, old
fashioned poems, as if there was sort
of relationship and consistency be-
tween him and the poems, and would
frequently repeat verses of them in an
distracted sort of way, as if they
soothed him. One, | remember was
that old poem by Knox, which begins:
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be
proud?'
Senator Voorhees,.