frame-house--Springfield still had log houses, and not only in the
environs, either!--and to cap the novelty, had that other new feature,
a lightning-rod, put upon it. The object of the slur at youth had
listened to the diatribe, flattering only so far as he was singled
out.

Mr. Joshua F. Speed, a bosom friend of Lincoln, reports the retort as
follows:

"The gentleman says that 'this young man must be taken down.' It is
for you, not for me, to say whether I am up or down. The gentleman
has alluded to my being a young man; I am older in years than in the
tricks and trades of politicians.

"I desire to live, and I desire place and distinction as a politician;
but I would rather die now than, like the gentleman, live to see the
day that I would have to erect a lightning-rod to protect a guilty
conscience from an offended God!"

Mr. Speed says that the reply was characterized by great force and
dignity. The happy image of the lightning-rod for a conscience has
passed into the fixed-star stage of a household word throughout the
West.


* * * * *


FIRING ON A FLEA FOR A SQUIRREL.