Abstract

My Father Knew Lincoln

It was always a matter for homeric laughter between the country doctor and his little boy that former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the most generous and self-sacrificing of men, had once been called "an old hog." Lincoln, duly contrite and tenderly apologetic, but also filled to repletion, at last arose to go, and himself went and got his hat. All at once he was taken with some idea or another, probably legal, and, pulling from his pocket, as he had a way of doing, a used envelop; he made thereon some brief notation. Having done this, he filed the envelope, not back in his pocket as anyone else would have done, but inside his hat, between the crown and the sweatband. This was, in fact, a common filing place with Lincoln for notes and, indeed, back in New Salem, distributing mail about the village, he had carried it all in his hat.