Page:Six Months at the White House.djvu/269

262 dent, his arm around his son, with his deep, earnest tone, each morning read a chapter from the Bible."

Some one was discussing, in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, the character of a time-serving Washington clergyman. Said Mr. Lincoln to his visitor:—

"I think you are rather hard upon Mr.. He reminds me of a man in Illinois, who was tried for passing a counterfeit bill.  It was in evidence that before passing it he had taken it to the cashier of a bank and asked his opinion of the bill, and he received a very prompt reply that it was a counter-feit. His lawyer, who had heard of the evidence to be brought against his client, asked him, just before going into court, 'Did you take the bill to the cashier of the bank and ask him if it was good?'  'I did,' was the reply.  'Well, what was the reply of the cashier?'  The rascal was in a corner, but he got out of it in this fashion: 'He said it was a pretty tolerable, respectable sort of a bill.'"

Mr. Lincoln thought the clergyman was "a pretty tolerable, respectable sort of a clergyman."

A visitor, congratulating Mr. Lincoln on the prospects of his reëlection, was answered with an anecdote of an Illinois farmer who undertook to blast his own rocks. His first effort at producing an explosion proved a failure. He explained the cause by exclaiming, "Pshaw, this powder has been shot before!"

An amusing, yet touching instance of the Presi-