brigadier-generals."

There are many who believe that Mr. Lincoln loved to tell obscene
or profane stories, but they do great injustice to one of the
purest and best men I have ever known. His humor must be judged
by the environment that aided in its creation.

As a prominent lawyer who traveled the circuit in Illinois, he
was much in the company of his fellow lawyers, who spent their
evenings in the rude taverns of what was then almost frontier
life. The Western people thus thrown together with but limited
sources of culture and enjoyment, logically cultivated the story
teller, and Lincoln proved to be the most accomplished in that
line of all the members of the Illinois bar. They had no private
rooms for study, and the evenings were always spent in the common
barroom of the tavern, where Western wit, often vulgar or
profane, was freely indulged in, and the best of them at times
told stories which were somewhat "broad;" but even while thus
indulging in humor that would grate harshly upon severely refined
hearers, they despised the vulgarian; none despised vulgarity
more than Lincoln.

I have heard him tell at one time or another almost or quite all
of the stories he told during his Presidential term, and there
were very few of them which might not have been repeated in a
parlor and none descended to obscene, vulgar or profane
expressions. I have never known a man of purer instincts than
Abraham Lincoln, and his appreciation of all that was beautiful
and good was of the highest order.