"Couldn't you put
just a drop of the cratur in unbeknownst to me?"

After telling the story Lincoln simply added: "If these men could
get away from the country unbeknownst to us, it might save a world of
trouble." All understood precisely what Lincoln meant, although he
had given expression in the most cautious manner possible and the
controversy was ended.

Lincoln differed from professional humorists in the fact that he
never knew when he was going to be humorous. It bubbled up on the most
unexpected occasions, and often unsettled the most carefully studied
arguments. I have many times been with him when he gave no sign of
humor, and those who saw him under such conditions would naturally
suppose that he was incapable of a humorous expression. At other times
he would effervesce with humor and always of the most exquisite and
impressive nature. His humor was never strained; his stories never
stale, and even if old, the application he made of them gave them the
freshness of originality.

I recall sitting beside him in the White House one day when a message
was brought to him telling of the capture of several brigadier-generals
and a number of horses somewhere out in Virginia. He read the dispatch
and then in an apparently soliloquizing mood, said: "Sorry for the
horses; I can make brigadier-generals."

There are many who believe that Mr. Lincoln loved to tell obscene or
profane stories, but they do great injustice to one of the purest and
best men I have ever known. His humor must be judged by the environment
that aided in its creation.

As a prominent lawyer who traveled the circuit in Illinois, he was much
in the company of his fellow lawyers, who spent their evenings in the
rude taverns of what was then almost frontier life. The Western people
thus thrown together with but limited sources of culture and enjoyment,
logically cultivated the story teller, and Lincoln proved to be the most
accomplished in that line of all the members of the Illinois bar. They
had no private rooms for study, and the evenings were always spent in
the common barroom of the tavern, where Western wit, often vulgar or
profane, was freely indulged in, and the best of them at times told
stories which were somewhat "broad;" but even while thus indulging
in humor that would grate harshly upon severely refined hearers, they
despised the vulgarian; none despised vulgarity more than Lincoln.

I have heard him tell at one time or another almost