iginal drawings illustrating the "point" of
Lincoln's stories.

These illustrations are not copies of other pictures, but are original
drawings made from the author's original text expressly for this book.

In these high-class outline pictures the artists have caught the true
spirit of Lincoln's humor, and while showing the laughable side of
many incidents in his career, they are true to life in the scenes and
characters they portray.

In addition to these new and original pictures, the book contains many
rare and valuable photograph portraits, together with biographies, of
the famous men of Lincoln's day, whose lives formed a part of his own
life history.

No Lincoln book heretofore published has ever been so profusely, so
artistically and expensively illustrated.

The parables, yarns, stories, anecdotes and sayings of the "Immortal
Abe" deserve a place beside Aesop's Fables, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
and all other books that have added to the happiness and wisdom of
mankind.

Lincoln's stories are like Lincoln himself. The more we know of them the
better we like them.

BY COLONEL ALEXANDER K. McCLURE.

While Lincoln would have been great among the greatest of the land as a
statesman and politician if like Washington, Jefferson and Jackson,
he had never told a humorous story, his sense of humor was the most
fascinating feature of his personal qualities.

He was the most exquisite humorist I have ever known in my life. His
humor was always spontaneous, and that gave it a zest and elegance that
the professional humorist never attains.

As a rule, the men who have become conspicuous in the country as
humorists have excelled in nothing else. S. S. Cox, Proctor Knott, John
P. Hale and others were humorists in Congress. When they arose to speak
if they failed to be humorous they utterly failed, and they rarely
strove to be anything but humorous. Such men often fail, for the
professional humorist, however gifted, cannot always be at his best, and
when not at his best he is grievously disappointing.

I remember Corwin, of Ohio, who was a great statesman as well as a great
humorist, but whose humor predominated in his public speeches in Senate
and House, warning a number of the younger Senators and Representatives
on a social occasion when he had returned to Congress in his old age,
against seeking to acquire the reputation of humorists. He said it
was the mistake of his life. He loved it as did his hearers,