Only once in the course of our long and rambling conversation did Lincoln refer to the war. That was when he asked me how the soldiers’ spirits were keeping up. He said he had been giving out so much cheer to the generals and Congressmen that he had pumped himself dry and must take in a new supply from some source at once. He declared that his “ear bones ached” to hear a good peal of honest laughter. It was difficult, he said, to laugh in any acceptable manner when soldiers were dying and widows weeping, but he must laugh soon even if he had to go down cellar to do it. He asked me if I had thought how sacred a thing was a loving smile, and how important it often was to laugh. Then he told[Pg 116] how some union officers in reconnoitering had heard the Confederates laughing loudly over a game, and returned cast down with fear of some sudden and successful attack by the cheerful enemy. That laughter actually postponed a great battle for which the union soldiers had been prepared.
When, as I later ascertained, I had been with the President for almost two hours, he suddenly straightened up in his chair, remarked that he “felt much better now,” and with a friendly but firm, “Good morning,” turned back to the papers before him on the table. This sounds abrupt as it is told, but there was a homeliness and simplicity about everything Lincoln did which robbed the action of any suspicion of discourtesy. One does not shake hands with a member of his own family on merely quitting a room, and I felt that a ceremonious dismissal would have been equally uncalled for in this case. Perhaps I really should say that is the way I feel now; at[Pg 117] the time I did not think of the matter at all because what was done seemed perfectly natural and proper.
In the anteroom the crowd was greater, if anything, than when I had gone in. Among those callers there were certain to be some who would bring trouble and vexation aplenty to the President. It was in preparation for this that he had been resting himself, like a boxer between the rounds of a bout. One would make a great error by supposing that Lincoln’s normal manner was that which he had exhibited to me. He could be soft and tender-hearted as any woman, but within that kindly nature there lay gigantic strength and the capacity for the most decisive action. He could speak slowly and weigh his words when occasion demanded, but his usual manner was vigorous and prompt—so much so that at times his speech had a quality which might fairly be described as explosive.
This was because he always knew[Pg 118] exactly what he wanted to say. He thought out each problem to the end and decided it; then he left that and did not trouble his mind about it any more, but took up something else. This habit of disciplined thinking gave him a great advantage over most people, who mix their thinking and try to carry on a dozen mental processes all at once.
Lincoln realized the importance of mental discipline and he gave to humor a high place as an aid to its attainment. I have already told how, in discussing Artemus Ward with me, he said Ward was really an educator, for he understood that the purpose of education was to discipline the mind, to enable a man to think quickly and accurately in all circumstances of life. I hope the reader will bear with me if I repeat some of the points which Lincoln made then, because they show so clearly why he valued humor. Lincoln said that much of Ward’s humor was of the educational sort. It aroused intellectual activity[Pg 119] of the finest kind, and he mentioned Ward’s constant use of riddles as an illustration. Then he spoke of the ancient Samson riddle and the fables of ?sop, and called attention to the fact that they employed a joke to train the mind by the study of keen satire. He said Ward was like that. It seems that Tad came to Ward at the table one day after he had heard somewhere a joke about Adam in Eden. So he said to Mr. Ward, “How did Adam get out of Eden?”
Ward had never heard the conundrum and did not give the answer Tad expected, but he had one of his own, for he exclaimed “Adam was ‘snaked’ out.” It took Tad some little time to fathom this reply and gave him some splendid mental exercise. Mr. Lincoln said he did not see why they did not have a course of humor in the schools. It was characteristic of his great modesty that whenever he referred to school or to college Lincoln always tried to limit himself by saying that, as he did[Pg 120] not know what they did learn there, he was not an authority on the subject, but that such-and-such a thing was just “his notion.”
If discipline was a subjective purpose in Lincoln’s use of humor, it may be said with equal certainty that the illustrative power of a well-told story was the principal objective use to which he put it. Lincoln seems never to have told a story simply to relate it; everyone he told had an application aside from the story itself. There is something profoundly elemental about this; it is like the use of the parable in the teachings of Christ.
Astute minds, capable of grasping the meaning of facts without illustration, sometimes resented this habit of the President’s; some of the sharpest criticism, as might be expected, came from within the Cabinet itself; but there can certainly be no just fou............