“The Monarch of All He Surveyed.”
Lincoln’s coquetting with the science of Gunter, Jack of all trades that he was, empowered him to perpetrate a fine pun on the United States surveyor-general in California, General Beall. This official acquired in his course so much real estate of the first quality that on a reference being made to it in the President’s hearing, he observed:
“Yes, they say Beall is ‘monarch of all he surveyed.’” (New York Herald.)