will, I hope I shall be able to increase it to twenty thousand, and that
is as much as any man ought to want."

SQUASHED A BRUTAL LIE.

In September, 1864, a New York paper printed the following brutal story:

"A few days after the battle of Antietam, the President was driving
over the field in an ambulance, accompanied by Marshal Lamon, General
McClellan and another officer. Heavy details of men were engaged in
the task of burying the dead. The ambulance had just reached the
neighborhood of the old stone bridge, where the dead were piled
highest, when Mr. Lincoln, suddenly slapping Marshal Lamon on the knee,
exclaimed: 'Come, Lamon, give us that song about "Picayune Butler";
McClellan has never heard it.'

"'Not now, if you please,' said General McClellan, with a shudder; 'I
would prefer to hear it some other place and time.'"

President Lincoln refused to pay any attention to the story, would
not read the comments made upon it by the newspapers, and would permit
neither denial nor explanation to be made. The National election was
coming on, and the President's friends appealed to him to settle the
matter for once and all. Marshal Lamon was particularly insistent, but
the President merely said:

"Let the thing alone. If I have not established character enough to
give the lie to this charge, I can only say that I am mistaken in my
own estimate of myself. In politics, every man must skin his own skunk.
These fellows are welcome to the hide of this one. Its body has already
given forth its unsavory odor."

But Lamon would not "let the thing alone." He submitted to Lincoln a
draft of what he conceived to be a suitable explanation, after reading
which the President said:

"Lamon, your 'explanation' is entirely too belligerent in tone for so
grave a matter. There is a heap of 'cussedness' mixed up with your usual
amiability, and you are at times too fond of a fight. If I were you, I
would simply state the facts as they were. I would give the statement as
you have here, without the pepper and salt. Let me try my hand at it."

The President then took up a pen and wrote the following, which was
copied and sent out as Marshal Lamon's refutation of the shameless
slander:

"The President has known me intimately for nearly twenty years, and has
often heard me sing little ditties. The battle of Antietam was fought on
the 17th day of September, 1862. On the first day of October, just
two weeks after the battle, th