The Kindness of Lincoln
The Little Birds
When Lincoln was a lawyer, one day he was going with a party of lawyers to attend court. They were riding, two by two, on horseback through a country lane, Lincoln in the rear. As they passed through a thicket of wild plum and crab-apple trees, his friends missed him.
“Where is he?” they asked.
Just then Lincoln’s companion came riding up. “Oh,” replied he, “when I saw him last, he had caught two young birds that the wind had blown out of their nest, and was hunting for the nest to put them back.”
After a little while, Lincoln rode up, and when his friends rallied him about his tender heart, he said:—
“I could not have slept, unless I had restored those little birds to their mother.”
Rescuing the Pig
Another time, Lincoln was riding past a deep miry ditch, and saw a pig struggling in the mud. The animal could not get out, and was squealing with terror.
Lincoln looked at the pig and the mud, and then at his clothes—clean ones, that he had just put on. Then he decided in favour of the clean clothes, and rode along.
But he could not get rid of the thought of the poor animal struggling so pitifully in its terror. He had not gone far when he turned back.
He reached the ditch, dismounted, and tied his horse. Then he collected some old wooden rails, and with them made a foot-bridge to the bottom of the ditch. He carefully walked down the bridge, and caught hold of the pig. He pulled it out, and setting it on the ground, let it run away.
The screaming, struggling pig, had spattered Lincoln’s clean clothes with mud. His hands were covered with filth; so he went to the nearest brook, washed them, and wiped them on the grass.
Later, when telling a friend about his adventure, Lincoln said that he had rescued the pig for purely selfish reasons, “to take a pain out of his own mind.”
Opening Their Eyes
It was toward the close of the Civil War, the crisis had come, and the end of the long struggle was in sight. The Union troops were hemming in Richmond. President Lincoln went himself to City Point, and there he remained, anxiously waiting.
In his tent lived a pet cat. It had a family of new-born kittens. Sometimes, the President relieved his mind by playing with them.
Finally Richmond was taken, and Lincoln prepared to visit the city. Before he left his tent, he picked up one of the kittens, saying:—
“Little kitten, I must perform a last act of kindness for you before I go. I must open your eyes.”
He passed his hand gently over its closed lids, until the eyes opened; then he set the kitten on the floor, and said:—
“Oh! that I could open the eyes of my blinded fellow-countrymen as easily as I have those of that little creature!”