e sent Ward Lamon on a ticklish mission to
South Carolina.

When the proposed trip was mentioned to Secretary Seward, he opposed it,
saying, "Mr. President, I fear you are sending Lamon to his grave. I am
afraid they will kill him in Charleston, where the people are excited
and desperate. We can't spare Lamon, and we shall feel badly if anything
happens to him."

Mr. Lincoln said in reply: "I have known Lamon to be in many a close
place, and he has never, been in one that he didn't get out of, somehow.
By jing! I'll risk him. Go ahead, Lamon, and God bless you! If you
can't bring back any good news, bring a palmetto." Lamon brought back a
palmetto branch, but no promise of peace.

IT TICKLED THE LITTLE WOMAN.

Lincoln had been in the telegraph office at Springfield during the
casting of the first and second ballots in the Republican National
Convention at Chicago, and then left and went over to the office of the
State Journal, where he was sitting conversing with friends while the
third ballot was being taken.

In a few moments came across the wires the announcement of the result.
The superintendent of the telegraph company wrote on a scrap of paper:
"Mr. Lincoln, you are nominated on the third ballot," and a boy ran with
the message to Lincoln.

He looked at it in silence, amid the shouts of those around him; then
rising and putting it in his pocket, he said quietly: "There's a little
woman down at our house would like to hear this; I'll go down and tell
her."

"SHALL ALL FALL TOGETHER."

After Lincoln had finished that celebrated speech in "Egypt" (as a
section of Southern Illinois was formerly designated), in the course
of which he seized Congressman Ficklin by the coat collar and shook him
fiercely, he apologized. In return, Ficklin said Lincoln had "nearly
shaken the Democracy out of him." To this Lincoln replied:

"That reminds me of what Paul said to Agrippa, which, in language and
substance, was about this: 'I would to God that such Democracy as you
folks here in Egypt have were not only almost, but altogether, shaken
out of, not only you, but all that heard me this day, and that you would
all join in assisting in shaking off the shackles of the bondmen by all
legitimate means, so that this country may be made free as the good Lord
intended it.'"

Said Ficklin in rejoinder: "Lincoln, I remember of reading somewhere in
the same book from which you get your Agrippa story, that Paul, whom