YOU NEVER REGRET WHAT YOU DON'T WRITE.

A simple remark one of the party might make would remind Mr. Lincoln of an apropos story.

Secretary of the Treasury Chase happened to remark, “Oh, I am so sorry that I had to write a letter to Mr. So-and-so before I left home!" Mr. Lincoln promptly responded:

"Chase, never regret what you don't write; it is what you do write that you are often called upon to feel sorry for."

IT "DEPENDED" UPON HOW THINGS WERE.

Secretary of War Stanton said that just before he left Washington he had received a telegram from General Mitchell, in Alabama, asking instructions in regard to a certain emergency that had arisen.

The Secretary said he did not precisely understand the emergency as explained by General Mitchell, but he had answered back, "All right; go ahead."

"Now," he said, "Mr. President, if I have made an error in not understanding him correctly, I will have to get you to countermand the order." "Well," exclaimed Lincoln, "that is very much like the occasion of a certain horse sale I remember that took place at the cross-roads down in Kentucky when I was a boy.

'A particularly fine horse was to be sold, and the people gathered together. They had a small boy to ride the horse up and down while the spectators examined the horse's points.

"At last one man whispered to the boy as he went by: 'Look here, boy, hain't that horse got the splints?'

"The boy replied: 'Mister, I don't know what the splints is, but if it is good for him, he has got it; if it ain't good for him, he ain't got it.'

"Now," said Mr. Lincoln, "if this was good for Mitchell, it was all right; but if it was not, I have got to countermand it."

LINCOLN WAS A LAWYER OF DIGNITY AND RESERVE.

Lincoln, notwithstanding all his stories and jests, his frank, companionable humor, his gift of easy accessibility and welcome, was, even while he traveled the Eighth circuit, a man of grave and serious temper, and of an unusual innate dignity and reserve.

He had few or no special intimates, and there was a line beyond which no one ever thought of passing.

Nicolay and Hay thus describe him in the court-room:

"He seemed absolutely at home in the court-room; his great stature did not encumber him there; it seemed like a natural symbol of superiority. His bearing and gesticulation had no awkwardness about them; they were simply striking and original.

He assumed at the start a frank and friendly relation with the jury, which was extremely effective. He usually began, as the phrase ran, by 'giving away his case;' by allowing to the opposite side every possible advantage that they could honestly and justly claim.

"Then he would present his own side of the case, with a clearness, a candor, an adroitness of statement which at once flattered and convinced the jury, and made even the bystanders his partisans.

"Sometimes, he disturbed the court with laughter by his humorous or apt illustrations; sometimes, he excited the audience by that florid and exuberant rhetoric which he knew well enough how and when to indulge in; but his more usual and more successful manner was to rely upon a clear, strong, lucid statement, keeping details in proper subordination, and bringing forward, in a way which fastened the attention of court and jury alike, the essential point on which he claimed a decision.

"Indeed,' says one of his colleagues, 'his statement often rendered argument unnecessary, and the court would stop him, and say: "If that is the case, we will hear the other side."'

Judge David Davis, of the United States Supreme Court, said of him: "The framework of his mental and moral being was honesty, and a wrong cause was poorly defended by him."

LINCOLN'S STORY ABOUT "DANNY" WEBSTER'S DIRTY

HANDS.

Lincoln on one occasion narrated, with much zest, the following story about young Daniel Webster:

When quite young, at school, Daniel was one day guilty of a gross violation of the rules. He was detected in the act, and called up by the teacher for punishment.

This was to be the old-fashioned "feruling" of the hand. His hands happened to be very dirty.

Knowing this, on the way to the teacher's desk he spit upon the palm of his right hand, wiping it off upon the side of his pantaloons.

"Give me your hand, sir," said the teacher, very sternly.

Out went the right hand, partly cleansed. The teacher looked at it a moment, and said:

"Daniel, if you will find another hand in this school-room as filthy as that, I will let you off this time!"

Instantly from behind the back came the left hand.

"Here it is, sir," was the ready reply.

"That will do," said the teacher, "for this time; you can take your seat, sir."

LINCOLN WOULD NOT PARDON A SLAVE-TRADER.

Mr. John B. Alley, of Lynn, Massachusetts, was made the bearer to the President of a petition for pardon of a person confined in the Newburyport jail for being engaged in the slave trade.

He had been sentenced to five years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of one thousand dollars. The petition was accompanied by a letter to Mr. Alley, in which the prisoner acknowledged his guilt and the justice of his sentence.

He was very penitent—at least on paper-and had received the full measure of his punishment, so far as it related to the term of his imprisonment; but he was still held because he could not pay his fine.

Mr. Alley, who was much moved by the pathetic appeals of the letter, read it to the President, who, when he had himself read the petition, said: "My friend, that is a very touching appeal to our feelings.

"You know my weakness is to be, if possible, too easily moved by appeals for mercy, and if this man were guilty of the foulest murder that the arm of man could perpetrate, I might forgive him on such an appeal; but the man who could go to Africa, and rob her of her children, and sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer that he can never receive pardon at my hands.

"No! He may rot in jail before he shall have liberty by any act of mine."

The calculating mercenary crime of man-stealing and man-selling, with all the cruelties which are essential accompaniments to the business, could win from him, as an officer of the people, no pardon.

CUTTING REPLY TO THE CONFEDERATE COMMISSION.

A so-called "peace conference," procured by the voluntary agency of Francis P. Blair, was held on the steamer River Queen, in Hampton Roads, on February 3d, 1865, between President Lincoln and Mr. Seward, representing the government, and Messrs. Alexander H. Stephens, J. A. Campbell and Mr. Hunter, representing the rebel Confederacy.

Mr. Hunter said that the recognition of Jeff Davis' power was the first and indispensable step to peace, and, to illustrate his point, referred to the correspondence between King Charles I. and his Parliament, as a reliable precedent of a constitutional ruler treating with rebels.

Mr. Lincoln's face wore that indescribable expression which generally preceded his hardest hits as he remarked:

"Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, and I don't profess to be; but my only distinct recollection of the matter is that Charles lost his head!"

Mr. Hunter remarked, on the same occasion, that the slaves, always accustomed to work upon compulsion under an overseer, would, if suddenly freed, precipitate not only themselves, but the entire society of the South, into irremediable ruin. No work would be done, but black and white would starve together.

The President waited for Mr. Seward to answer the argument, but as that gentleman hesitated, he said:

"Mr. Hunter, you ought to know a great deal better about the matter than I, for you have always lived under the slave system.

"I can only say, in reply to your statement of the case, that it reminds. me of a man out in Illinois, by the name of Case, who undertook, a few years ago, to raise a very large herd of hogs.

"It was a great trouble to feed them, and how to get around this was a puzzle to him. At length he hit upon the plan of planting an immense field of potatoes, and, when they were sufficiently grown, he turned the whole herd into the field and let them have full swing, thus saving not only the labor of feeding the hogs, but also of digging the potatoes!

"Charmed with his sagacity, he stood one day leaning against the fence, counting his hogs, when a neighbor came along.

"'Well, well,' said he, 'Mr. Case, this is very fine. Your hogs are doing very well just now; but you know out here in Illinois the frost comes early, and the ground freezes a foot deep.

'Then what are they going to do?'

"This was a view of the matter which Mr. Case had not taken into account. Butchering-time for hogs was away on in December or January. "He scratched his head, and at length stammered:

"Well, it may come pretty hard on their snouts, but I don't see but it will be root hog or die!'"

THIS SOLDIER GOT HIS FURLOUGH.

President Lincoln received the following pertinent letter from an indignant private, which speaks for itself:

"Dear President:-I have been in the service eighteen months, and I have never received a cent.

"I desire a furlough for fifteen days, in order to return home and remove my family to the poorhouse."

The President granted the furlough.

LINCOLN GOT THE WORST OF THE TRADE.

When Lincoln was a lawyer out in Illinois, he and a certain judge once got to bantering one another about trading horses.

It was agreed that the next morning at nine o'clock they should make a trade, the horses to be unseen up to that hour, and no backing out, under a forfeiture of twenty-five dollars.

At the hour appointed, the judge came up, leading the sorriest-looking specimen of a horse ever seen in those parts.

In a few minutes Lincoln was seen approaching with a wooden sawhorse upon his shoulders.

Great were the shouts and the laughter of the crowd, and both were greatly increased when Lincoln, on surveying the judge's animal, set down. his sawhorse, and exclaimed:

"Well, judge, this is the first time I ever got the worst of it in a horsetrade."

IT WAS A NEW ONE ON ABRAHAM.

A certain moral philosopher was telling the President one day about the undercurrent of public opinion. He went on to explain at length, and drew an illustration from the Mediterranean Sea.