"ABE" LINCOLN FUN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LI, Issue 9137, 9 July 1906, Page 3

"ABE" LINCOLN FUN.

A story is told in the Century Magazine by Mr Frederick Trevor Hill, illustrating Abraham Lincoln's power of laughing cases out of court. Once, when defending a nian, the chief witness for the prosecution stated that his name was J. Parker Green. Lincoln reverted to this the moment he rc-so to cross-examine. "Why J. Parker Groe>n? What did the J. stand tor? John? Well, why didn't the witness call himself John P. Green? That was his name, wasn't it? Well, what was the reason he did not wish to be known by his right name? THd J. Porker Green have anything to conceal ; and if not, why did J. Parker Green part his name 1 in that way " And so on. 'There was something irresistibly funny," says the narrator, 'in the varying tones and inflections of Mr Lincoln's voice as he rang the changes upon the man's name; and at the recess the very boy in the street took it up as a slogan and shouted, 'J. Parker Green ' all over the town. Moreover, there was something in Lincoln's way of intoning

his questions which made me suspicious of \ the witness, and to this day I have never <U been able to rid my mind of the- absurd impression tibat there was something not cuite right about J. Parker Green. It was all i.onsense, of course; but the jury must have been affected as I was, for Green was discredited, and the defendant vent free "