Page:Six Months at the White House.djvu/263

256 A gentleman calling at the White House one evening carried a cane, which, in the course of conversation, attracted the President's attention. Taking it in his hand, he said: "I always used a cane when I was a boy. It was a freak of mine.  My favorite one was a knotted beech stick, and I carved the head myself.  There's a mighty amount of character in sticks.  Don't you think so?  You have seen these fishing-poles that fit into a cane?  Well that was an old idea of mine.  Dogwood clubs were favorite ones with the boys.  I suppose they use them yet.  Hickory is too heavy, unless you get it from a young sapling.  Have you ever noticed how a stick in one's hand will change his appearance?  Old women and witches wouldn't look so without sticks.  Meg Merrilies understands that."

One of Mr. Lincoln's "illustrations" in my hearing, on one occasion, was of a man who, in driving the hoops of a hogshead to "head" it up, was much annoyed by the constant falling in of the top. At length the bright idea struck him of putting his little boy inside to "hold it up." This he did; it never occurring to him till the job was done, how he was to get his child out. "This," said he, "is a fair sample of the way some people always do business."

In a time of despondency, some visitors were telling the President of the "breakers" so often seen ahead—"this time surely coming." "That," said he, "suggests the story of the school-boy,