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Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 by John G. Nicolay
Book, page 122 / 313


hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most
distressingly affected in their heels with a species of running itch?
It seems that this malady of their heels operates on the sound-headed
and honest-hearted creatures, very much as the cork leg in the comic
song did on its owner, which, when he once got started on it, the more
he tried to stop it the more it would run away. At the hazard of
wearing this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems
to be too strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier who
was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who
invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the
engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied,
'Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had, but
somehow or other whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run
away with it.' So with Mr. Lamborn's party--they take the public money
into their hands for the most laudable purpose that wise heads and
honest hearts can dictate; but before they can possibly get it out
again, their rascally vulnerable heels will run away with them."

[Illustration: WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.]

The speech concludes with these swelling words: "Mr. Lamborn refers to
the late elections in the States, and from their results confidently
predicts every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the
next Presidential election. Address that argument to cowards and
slaves: with the free and the brave it will affect nothing. It may be
true; if it must, let it. Many free countries have lost their liberty,
and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not
that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know
that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil
spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political
corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with
frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land,
bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing; while
on its bosom are riding, like demons on the wave of Hell, the imps of
the Evil Spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare to resist
its destroying course with the hopelessness of their efforts; and
knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it
I, too, may be; bow to it, I never will. The probability that we may
fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause
we believe to be just. It shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul

 
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