Lincoln Story Book, The

<h3>"LIFE TOO PRECIOUS TO BE LOST."</h3> <p>Benjamin Owen, a young Vermont volunteer, was sentenced to the extremity for being asleep on post. Lincoln was especially lenient in these cases, as he held that a farm-boy, used to going to bed early, was apt to maintain the habit in later life. It came out that the youth had taken the place of a comrade the night before, as extra duty, and this overwork had fatigued him so that his succumbing was at least explicable. This clue being in a letter he wrote home, his sister journeyed to the capital with it and showed it to the President.</p> <p>"Oh, that fatal sleep!" he exclaimed, "thousands of lives might have been lost through that fatal sleep!"</p> <p>He wrote out the pardon, and said to the girl:</p> <p>"Go home, my child, and tell that father of yours, who could approve his country's sentence, even when it took the life of a youth like that, that Abraham Lincoln thinks the life too precious to be lost."</p> <p>He went in his carriage to deliver the pardon to the proper authorities for its execution--and not the soldier's. Then, making out a furlough for the released volunteer, he saw him and the sister off on the homeward journey, pinning a badge on the former's arm with the words:</p> <p>"The shoulder which should bear a comrade's burden, and die for it so uncomplainingly, must wear that strap!" <br/> <br/> <br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />