devil, but it was only the spirit of revenge which prompted me to pick up a live coal, covered with ashes, and drop it into his hands. For a moment he did'nt mind it, but it burned all the deeper; when it did burn he jumped and bellowed like a stuck calf.

"'Who made that noise?' Demanded old Whitey? the master.

"'I made it,' replied the big fellow, rubbing his hands.

"'Why?' more angrily demanded old Whitey.

"'Some one put a coal of fire in my hand and burnt me,' sniffled the booby.

"The big fellow, however, didn't know who did it. Some of the boys, who had a lurking pity for me, said it snapt into his hand; but the master 'couldn't see it;' and at last it leaked out that 'Abe Lincoln done it.'

"So you see, gentlemen," said Uncle Abe, moralizing, "I got the blame of a long score of supposititious shortcomings by one act of my own, pretty much as I had to bear the sins of my whole party in the late canvass, because of a few sins of my own."

"'Abraham, come up here!' thundered the master, (By the way, gentlemen, my people always called me Abe—my wife still calls me plain Abe—but that old fellow called me Abraham so often and so severely that I early dropped all claim to a definite appellative, and chose to be indefinitely 'A. Lincoln.') * But to go on. I got a deserved threshing that time, and a reputation withal for wickedness that saved all the little rogues in school. At last, however, I determined to be even with old Whitey, somehow.

"It wasn't long till I worked out an idea. Just over the master's desk was a rude shelf, upon which he kept some books and a big-bellied bottle of ink, which some admirer of his Jeffersonian-Republican principles had presented him. I had observed that in stepping upon his desk platform, he never touched or moved his chair, beyond leaning back in it, which he always did, after taking his seat. So next day I robbed our old long-tailed white horse of a few hairs and braided them in a three stranded cord. While the master was gone out to his dinner, I put the thin glass ink bottle upon the edge of the shelf propped a-cant, and tied one end of the cord to the bottle, and the other end to the back of his chair. The boys sympathized with me, and were in an extacy of delight. Anon the master came. Without looking to the right or left, he marched sternly to the chair, and hence saw not the repressed titter of expectation that was ready to burst over the whole room. I stood just outside of the door expecting the result; he sat down and then leaned back. Down came the bottle, deluging the bald head in a shower of Stygian blackness! Yes, gentlemen, I fancy that was the first black Republican ever made in Kentuck, but the conversion was too sudden."

"How was that?" queried Cassius M. Clay.

"Why," replied Uncle Abe, "he afterwards married a widow and——twelve negroes."

The Wrong Pig by the Ear.

I never knew a flash phrase worse used up than was one by Uncle Abe attending one of the neighboring Circuit Courts above Springfield. He was employed to aid a young County Attorney to prosecute some reputed hog thieves. The crime of hog stealing had become so common that the people were considerably excited and an example was determined on. The first person tried was acquitted on a pretty clear alibi or pretty hard swearing. As the fellow thus acquitted was lounging round the Court House, Uncle Abe was passing, and he hailed him.

"Well Mr. Lincoln, I reckon you got the wrong sow by the ear when you undertook to pen me up."

"So it seems," replied Uncle Abe, blandly, "but really you must excuse me, pigs are so very much alike! In fact, people up here don't all seem to know their own."

"Wilkie, where does Old Abe Lincoln Live."

In "Clay times," as the old farmers of Sangamon still recall the period of Henry Clay's powerful canvass for the Presidency, Uncle Abe had a wide circuit practice. In travelling to the various courts, he generally drove a horse and vehicle that some people will still remember. The horse had belonged to an undertaker, and the "funeral business," together with years, had made him a grave and staid animal. His physique presented those angularities that characterized his master, but unlike his owner, he was never known to perpetrate a joke or indulge in a "horselaugh." The vehicle was neither buggy, nor Jersey wagon, but had become, by virtue of alterations and repairs, what Uncle Abe afterwards described the Union under the plan of free and Slave States "neither one thing or the other." There was in fact an "eternal fitness" in horse and man that was not exactly a "standing joke," but a peripatetic one.

I would give all my expectation of a brigadiership for a portrait of Uncle Abe seated in this strange "turnout," as he "might have been seen" wending his meditative way across the prairies.

About this time Uncle Abe was nominated for Congress in the Sangamon. Yet he did not forego his business, but prosecuted his legal course, as well as all evil-doers who chanced to fall into his hands. He had just started on a circuit trip, to be gone a month. Often, since Mr. Lincoln's nomination for Congress, had Mrs. Lincoln begged him to add a second story to their humble dwelling, but he pleaded poverty. But a relation of Mrs. Lincoln's having died in Kentucky leaving her a small legacy, she determined her husband should have a house worthy a candidate for Congress. Doubtless she felt an inward satisfaction at the thought of furnishing a good surprise for her husband on his return. So she at once bought material, set mechanics at work, and in three weeks metamorphosed the dwelling into what political pilgrims to Springfield in 1860 will remember as a neat, two-story, clay-colored residence.

Uncle Abe arrived home just after dark, and drove up to what he thought to be Eighth street, but not seeing his house, and thinking he had made a mistake, he drove round on to the next street. Recognizing the houses there; he again drove around to Eighth, and, passing his own house, recognized that occupied by W———n, a clever tailor, who was standing at his own gate.

"Why, is that you, Wilkie?" (said Uncle Abe patronizingly.) W———n, assured him of his own identity, "Wilkie, where does Old Abe Lincoln live now."

"Well," said W———n, "The Loco's say he's so sure of his election that he's gone to Washington to select his seat; but Mrs. Lincoln lives now in that beautiful new two-story house you have just passed." Uncle Abe indulged in a quaint laugh, and then turned his ancient horse around, alighted and asked if Mrs. Lincoln lived in the house before which he stood. Mrs. Lincoln received him as a fond woman should receive her lord, and the return was the cause of much pleasant badinage in social circles.

Too Literal Obedience.

Gen. McClellan was complaining to Uncle Abe of one of his division commanders, who had literally obeyed an order publicly given for the purpose of hood-winking the rebels through the aid of the numerous undetected spies known to lurk in the camp as well as the capital.

"That reminds me of a little story—a little thing that happened to me when I was out in the Black Hawk war," said Uncle Abe.

"You see, after we brought the Foxes to terms, they were as sweet as wild honey. The women especially tried to make a good thing out of the defeat of their braves, by selling us moccasins, deerskin breeches, &c. One squaw in particular, made beautiful breeches, and I