"When you have an elephant on your hands, and he wants to run away, better let him run"*

Few of us look at a photo or drawing of Abraham Lincoln without seeing the sorrow and sadness in his eyes. I've often thought you could drown in those eyes. 

In historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's TED Talk, "Lessons from Past Presidents," Goodwin points out that so many years after his presidency and the turmoil of the Civil War, we think of Lincoln as a deeply wounded, melancholy man who suffered unimaginable loss. 

I think most of us have experienced a type of grief, and even guilt for feeling happy when so much suffering goes on in the world. I know I have.

Sometimes, grief and sorrow become the catalyst for action. My great-great-grandmother, Nancy Kendall, used her sorrow over slavery to help fugitive slaves escape. Most of us don't fall into a hole and hide when we're sad. Not for long, anyway. That sorrow is not our complete essence, but a part of who we are as people. And, it wasn't Abraham Lincoln's complete essence, either. 

Often forgotten when we look into those eyes, is the humor, affability and wit that was Abraham Lincoln. He was a storyteller. And, he was a great one.

“Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you the worst way.”
​The young woman accepted the inevitable, and hobbled around the room with him.
When she returned to her seat, one of her companions asked mischievously:
“Well, Mary, did he dance with you the worst way?”
“Yes,” she answered, “the very worst.”
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--Abraham Lincoln on dancing with his future wife, Mary Todd, in Springfield, IL
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Undoubtedly, much of the charm is lost in simply reading Lincoln's yarns. What's missing is the way he told them. He was animated and laughed as he told his tales. Listeners were captivated.

Not a storyteller in the traditional sense, Lincoln wasn't apt to just sit and "tell a story." Instead, says Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln '"Lincoln’s form of storytelling demonstrated his “extraordinary ability to convey practical wisdom in the form of humorous tales his listeners could remember and repeat.”' 
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The Gutenberg Project's "Lincoln's Yarns and Stories," by Alexander K. McClure, is available free online. It's a vast collection of stories, witticisms, humor, and illustrations that give us a different side of the sad, sorrowful man we think we know. 

​Perhaps it's time to look at Lincoln's eyes and see beyond the sorrow. 

* From the story, Getting Rid of an Elephant, related by Charles A. Dana, 1819-1897, Assistant Secretary of War.