He never understood so-called Lincolnisms: witty stories that Lincoln would tell to make his points. Sometimes, he would ask friends like Schurz to explain Lincoln’s parables to him. He was especially confused by Lincoln’s sarcasm. “If one told Charles Sumner that the moon was made of green cheese, he would controvert the alleged fact in all sincerity, and give good reasons why it could not be so,” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. once quipped.
