Abraham Lincoln's actual birthday on February 12 is about to be celebrated on President's Day, this year on February 20, to give a three-day federal holiday. I bet he would find the whole process of moving it around to give extra time off amusing
As a storyteller I find his ready supply of stories to fit whatever happened one of the most endearing aspects of the man. Colonel Alexander McClure must have thought so, too. He was a major supporter of Lincoln and, besides being "an American politician, newspaper editor, and writer" was a major supporter of Lincoln. Among his books he wrote one serious work about Lincoln, but his Lincoln's Yarns and Stories is a look at Lincoln in his storyteller role throughout his life. The subtitle says it best: A Complete Collection of the Funny and Witty Anecdotes That Made Lincoln Famous as America's Greatest Story Teller. I don't know if it's truly complete, I doubt it, but it's packed with incidents showing Lincoln, the storyteller. Many of them are quite brief. I wanted something with a bit more to it and the following story of what happened to his first inaugural address shows Lincoln telling not one but two stories. (I'm not quite sure why Lincoln called it his "certificate of moral character", but it's quite the story behind the speech.) The cartoons throughout the book are given anonymously.
LOST HIS CERTIFICATE OF CHARACTER.
Mr. Lincoln prepared his first inaugural address in a room over a store in
Springfield. His only reference works were Henry Clay’s great compromise
speech of 1850, Andrew Jackson’s Proclamation against Nullification,
Webster’s great reply to Hayne, and a copy of the Constitution.
When Mr. Lincoln started for Washington, to be inaugurated, the inaugural
address was placed in a special satchel and guarded with special care. At
Harrisburg the satchel was given in charge of Robert T. Lincoln, who
accompanied his father. Before the train started from Harrisburg the
precious satchel was missing. Robert thought he had given it to a waiter
at the hotel, but a long search failed to reveal the missing satchel with
its precious document. Lincoln was annoyed, angry, and finally in despair.
He felt certain that the address was lost beyond recovery, and, as it only
lacked ten days until the inauguration, he had no time to prepare another.
He had not even preserved the notes from which the original copy had been
written.
Mr. Lincoln went to Ward Lamon, his former law partner, then one of his
bodyguards, and informed him of the loss in the following words:
“Lamon, I guess I have lost my certificate of moral character, written by
myself. Bob has lost my gripsack containing my inaugural address.” Of
course, the misfortune reminded him of a story.
“I feel,” said Mr. Lincoln, “a good deal as the old member of the
Methodist Church did when he lost his wife at the camp meeting, and went
up to an old elder of the church and asked him if he could tell him
whereabouts in h—l his wife was. In fact, I am in a worse fix than
my Methodist friend, for if it were only a wife that were missing, mine
would be sure to bob up somewhere.”
The clerk at the hotel told Mr. Lincoln that he would probably find his
missing satchel in the baggage-room. Arriving there, Mr. Lincoln saw a
satchel which he thought was his, and it was passed out to him. His key
fitted the lock, but alas! when it was opened the satchel contained only a
soiled shirt, some paper collars, a pack of cards and a bottle of whisky.
A few minutes later the satchel containing the inaugural address was found
among the pile of baggage.
The recovery of the address also reminded Mr. Lincoln of a story, which is
thus narrated by Ward Lamon in his “Recollections of Abraham Lincoln”:
The loss of the address and the search for it was the subject of a great
deal of amusement. Mr. Lincoln said many funny things in connection with
the incident. One of them was that he knew a fellow once who had saved up
fifteen hundred dollars, and had placed it in a private banking
establishment. The bank soon failed, and he afterward received ten per
cent of his investment. He then took his one hundred and fifty dollars and
deposited it in a savings bank, where he was sure it would be safe. In a
short time this bank also failed, and he received at the final settlement
ten per cent on the amount deposited. When the fifteen dollars was paid
over to him, he held it in his hand and looked at it thoughtfully; then he
said, “Now, darn you, I have got you reduced to a portable shape, so I’ll
put you in my pocket.” Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Lincoln took
his address from the bag and carefully placed it in the inside pocket of
his vest, but held on to the satchel with as much interest as if it still
contained his “certificate of moral character.”
*****************
This
is part of a series of postings of stories under the category,
"Keeping the Public in Public Domain." The idea
behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the
authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel
strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the
20th century. My
own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public
Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy
discovering new stories.
At
the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates
projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an
audience. Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing
of Public Domain stories will not occur that week. This is a return to
my regular posting of a research project here. (Don't worry, this
isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future
storytelling to an audience.) Response has convinced me that "Keeping
the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other
postings as often as I can manage it.
Other
Public Domain story resources I recommend-
There
are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for
folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's
database, Yashpeh,
the International Folktales Collection. I have long
recommended it and continue to do so. He has loaded
Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so
you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression
you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
You may have noticed I'm no
longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his
offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking
specific types of stories. There's another site, FairyTalez
claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales,
folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for
phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
Between those two sites, there
is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait,
there's more!"
The
email list for storytellers, Storytell,
discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional
suggestions:
-
Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible
through the Wayback Machine, described below, but the late Jackie Baldwin's
wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google
search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ . It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016 and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
- Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com
doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her
way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for
finding new books and stories to love and tell.
You're
going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT
go to the Internet Archive
Wayback Machine to find some of these old links. Tim's
site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a
full-time job. In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that
Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she
could no longer maintain it. Possibly searches maintained it.
Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim
Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old
Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library
(something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine. It
took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally
in December of 2006 it appears!
Somebody
as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website
is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.
I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can
be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that
becomes the only way to find them.
You
can see why I recommend these to you.
Have fun
discovering even more stories
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