Mrs. Rose Linder Wilkinson, who often accompanied her father, Judge Linder, in the days when he rode circuit with Mr. Lincoln, tells the following story:
“At night, as a rule, the lawyers spent awhile in the parlor, and permitted the women who happened to be along to sit with them. But after half an hour or so we would notice it was time for us to leave them. I remember traveling the circuit one season when the young wife of one of the lawyers was with him. The place was so crowded that she and I were made to sleep together. When the time came for banishing us from the parlor, we went up to our room and sat there till bed-time, listening to the roars that followed each ether swiftly while those lawyers down-stairs told stories and laughed till the rafters rang.
“In the morning Mr. Lincoln said to me: ‘Rose, did we disturb your sleep last night?’ I answered, ‘No, I had no sleep’—which was not entirely true but the retort amused him. Then the young lawyer’s wife complained to him that we were not fairly used. We came along with them, young women, and when they were having the best time we were sent away like children to go to bed in the dark.
“‘But, Madame,’ said Mr. Lincoln, ‘you would not enjoy the things we laugh at.’ And then he entered into a discussion on what have been termed his ‘broad’ stories. He deplored the fact that men seemed to remember them longer and with less effort than any others.
“My father said: ‘But, Lincoln, I don’t remember the “broad” part of your stories so much as I do the moral that is in them,’ and it was a thing in which they were all agreed.”
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