DEAR SIR:

I.

ULYSSES S. GRANT.

NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 1885.

In the first draft of his book, Gen. Grant had fixed upon quite a large number of anecdotes which were afterward omitted. Among the number I find the following, for which, as will be seen, he was indebted to President Lincoln.

ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE, ESQ.

Respectfully,

F. D. GRANT.

I.

UST after receiving my commission as lieu

JUST

tenant-general, the President called me aside to speak to me privately. After a brief reference to the military situation, he said he thought he could illustrate what he wanted to say by a story, which he related as follows: "At one time there was a great war among the animals, and one side had great difficulty in getting a commander who had sufficient

confidence in himself. Finally, they found a monkey, by the name of Jocko, who said that he thought he could command their army if his tail could be made a little longer. So they got more tail and spliced it on to his caudal appendage. He looked at it admiringly, and then thought he ought to have a little more still. This was added, and again he called for more. The splicing process was repeated many times, until they had coiled Jocko's tail around the room, filling all the space. Still he called for more tail, and, there being no other place to coil it, they began wrapping it around his shoulders. He continued his call for more, and they kept on winding the additional tail about him until its weight broke him down."

I saw the point, and, rising from my chair, replied: "Mr. President, I will not call for more assistance unless I find it impossible to do with what I already have."

II.

Upon one occasion, when the President was at my head-quarters at City Point, I took him to see the work that had been done on the Dutch Gap Canal. After taking him around and showing him all the points of interest, explaining how, in blowing up one portion of the work that was being excavated, the explosion had thrown the material back into, and

filled up, a part already completed, he turned to me. and said: “Grant, do you know what this reminds me of? Out in Springfield, Illinois, there was a blacksmith named One day, when he did not have much to do, he took a piece of soft iron that had been in his shop for some time, and for which he had no special use, and, starting up his fire, began to heat it. When he got it hot he carried it to the anvil and began to hammer it, rather thinking he would weld it into an agricultural implement. He pounded away for some time until he got it fashioned into some shape, when he discovered that the iron would not hold out to complete the implement he had in mind. He then put it back into the forge, heated it up again, and recommenced hammering, with an illdefined notion that he would make a claw hammer, but after a time he came to the conclusion that there was more iron there than was needed to form a hammer. Again he heated it, and thought he would make an axe. After hammering and welding it into shape, knocking the oxydized iron off in flakes, he concluded there was not enough of the iron left to make an axe that would be of any use. He was now getting tired and a little disgusted at the result of his various essays. So he filled his forge full of coal, and, after placing the iron in the center of the heap, took the bellows and worked up a tremendous blast, bringing the iron to a white heat. Then with his