Page:He Knew Lincoln and Other Billy Brown Stories.djvu/89

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

BACK THERE IN '58

Buchanan, you know—"and you find they fit into a frame for a house, you can't help believing them men have been workin' on the same plan."

I tell you that speech riled his party. They said he oughtn't said it, if he did think it. It was too radical. They talked to him so much, tryin' to tone him down and to keep him from doin' it ag'in, that he flared up one day in here and he says, "Boys, if I had to take a pen and scratch out every speech I ever made except one, this speech you don't like's the one I'd leave." And he says it with his head up, lookin' as proud as if he was a Senator.

Well, somehow, as time went on, just watchin' Mr. Lincoln so dead in earnest begun to make me feel queer. And I got serious. Never'd been so but twict before in my life—once at a revival and next time when I thought I wasn't goin' to git

53