Fighting Out of One Coat Into the Other
“I remember being once much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engaged in a fight, with their greatcoats on, which fight, after a long and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat and into that of the other! If the two leading parties of to-day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two drunken men.”—(Letter declining a Jefferson banquet invitation, Springfield, Illinois, April 6, 1859.)