Lincoln Read Free

an apple. A teetotaller like Washburne, Lincoln was also, unlike his friend, averse to food in general. For several years Washburne, stout and rosy, had been urging Lincoln to eat more, if only to cure himself of a constipation so severe that he seldom moved his bowels more than once a week; and was obliged to drink by the gallon a terrifying laxative called blue mass. But Lincoln looked healthy enough, thought Washburne, if too lean; and he was strong as the proverbial ox; could lift from the floor, with arm outstretched, a heavy ax at the shaft’s end.
    When the fascinated waiters had moved out of earshot—and Mike had moved to stand guard at the door—Lincoln said to Seward, in a low voice, “I will never live this down, sneaking like a thief into the capital.”
    “Sir, the plot was real.” Seward sneezed; then blew his nose loudly in a yellow silk handkerchief.
    Washburne substituted for the momentarily incapacitated leader. He turned to Lincoln: “As your car was passing through Baltimore—they pull it by horses, you know, between the two depots—a gang of plug-uglies were planning to waylay you then and there.”
    “But with sufficient guards—”
    Seward interrupted Lincoln with a wave of an unlit cigar. “There wasn’t time between when we got news of the plot and your arrival in Baltimore. So General Scott insisted you come, as you did, with both houses of Congress informally concurring.” Seward looked at Washburne, who nodded gravely, as sole representative of the lower house.
    Lincoln stretched his arms until his back made a creaking sound. “I can’t say I’d have objected too much to getting shot. I tell you I thought that trip would never end. There is nothing more like eternity than a trainride of twelve days, unless,” he added, “it’s two people and a ham, as my father-in-law used to say.” Seward chuckled and lit his cigar.
    “The trip sounded like a triumph, from what we read in the press,” said Washburne.
    “Well, I’ve never given so many speeches and said so little. So I suppose it was remarkable in that.”
    Seward blew cigar smoke at the ceiling. “I
was
troubled to read, sir, that you had said somewhere along the line that no great harm had been done, even though six states have already left the Union and even more are threatening to go, while rebels are busy seizing Federal property all the way from Florida to North Carolina.”
    “I said no harm to
anyone
has been done.” Lincoln’s voice was even. “As yet.”
    The last monosyllable had its effect on both Seward and Washburne.
    “You know,” said Seward, trying a different tack, “that I am supposed to be the war-to-the-knife fellow—”
    “The conflict is ‘irrepressible’ is what you said.” Lincoln smiled. “That’s how you got me the nomination.”
    “Damnedest stupidest speech I ever gave!” Seward paused. “I know you don’t drink or smoke. Do you draw the line at profanity, too?”
    “Why, no! Fact, once when I was out on the circuit in Illinois, a stranger offered me whiskey and I said, no, I don’t drink and then he gave me a chew of tobacco and I said, no, I don’t chew and then he said, ‘Well, I’ve found that those with damned few vices have damned few virtues.’ ”
    Over the years, Washburne had heard Lincoln tell this particular story a dozen times; and the wording never varied. Lincoln’s little stories tended to come at regular intervals, as a form of punctuation—or evasion. But Lincoln was also a master of the long, cumulative, funny story; and many times Washburne had sat at the stove of some backwoods Illinois tavern when the lawyers on circuit would compete in story-telling and it was always Lincoln who won. Once he had got a group to laugh at the first detail, he would then add, relentlessly, more and more wilder and wilder details until men choked with laughter as the easy tenor voice continued, with all due gravity, to make them positively drunk with laughter. He was