Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1881 — The Negro Philosopher. [ARTICLE]

The Negro Philosopher.

President Lincoln once met with a negro on the deck of a steamboat, who illustrated the lines: Ha that fights and runs away Will live to fight another day. The President, finding the negro had served in a regiment that suffered severely at the battle of Fort Donelson, asked if he was in the fight. The colored man owned he had had a little taste of it, and then the following colloquy ensued : ‘ 4 Stood your ground, did you ?” “No, sa, I runs 1” “ Run at the first fire ?” “Yes, sa, and. would ha’ run soona had I knowed it cornin’.” “If our soldiers were all like you traitors might have broken up the Government without resistance.” “ Yes, sa; dar would hab been no help for it. I wouldn’t put my life in de scale ’gainst any Gobernment dat ever existed, for no Gobernment could make up de loss.” “ Do you think your company would have missed you if you had been killed?” “ Maybe not, sa; a dead white man ain’t much to these sogers, let alone a dead nigga; but I’d ha’ missed myself, and dat was de p’int wid me !” Mr. Planche’s Irish coachman took much the same view of things; when a traveler, seeing him fold an extraordinary comforter round his neck, remarked that he took very good care of himself, Pat replied : “To be sure I do, sir. What’s all the world to a man when his wife’s a widdy. ” [From the Elgin (Ill.) Daily Leader.] TnE subjoined opinion, we perceive, is by J. A. Daniels, Esq., of Messrs. Stogclill & Daniels, attorneys, La Crosse, Wis., and appears in the La Crosse Chronicle : Some time since, I was attacked with pain in and below one of my knee joints. A few applications of St. Jacobs Gil quieted the pain and relieved the inflammation. I regard it as a valuable medicine.