Stories and Anecdotes About Abraham Lincoln

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THE GUN SHOT BETTER.

The President took a lively interest in all new firearm improvements and inventions, and it sometimes happened that, when an inventor could get nobody else in the Government to listen to him, the President would personally test his gun. A former clerk in the Navy Department tells an incident illustrative.

He had stayed late one night at his desk, when he heard some one striding up and down the hall muttering: "I do wonder if they have gone already and left the building all alone." Looking out, the clerk was surprised to see the President.

"Good evening," said Mr. Lincoln. "I was just looking for that man who goes shooting with me sometimes."

The clerk knew Mr. Lincoln referred to a certain messenger of the Ordnance Department who had been accustomed to going with him to test weapons, but as this man had gone home, the clerk offered his services. Together they went to the lawn south of the White House, where Mr. Lincoln fixed up a target cut from a sheet of white Congressional notepaper.

"Then pacing off a distance of about eighty or a hundred feet," writes the clerk, "he raised the rifle to a level, took a quick aim, and drove the round of seven shots in quick succession, the bullets shooting all around the target like a Gatling gun and one striking near the center.

"'I believe I can make this gun shoot better,' said Mr. Lincoln, after we had looked at the result of the first fire. With this he took from his vest pocket a small wooden sight which he had whittled from a pine stick, and adjusted it over the sight of the carbine. He then shot two rounds, and of the fourteen bullets nearly a dozen hit the paper!"

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