At times he liked sheer nonsense. On one of his frequent visits to the War Department Telegraph Office, he was informed that the Federal pickets still held a certain position and that no firing had been heard since sunset. Inquiring if there had been any before sunset, he was informed there had not. “That reminds me,” said he, “of the man who described a child, supposedly a freak of nature, as being black from the hips down. And upon being asked its color from the hips up, he said, ‘Why, black, of course.’”
Source:
Thomas, Benjamin Platt, and Michael Burlingame. “Lincoln’s Humor.” "Lincolns Humor" and Other Essays. University of Illinois Press, 2002. 9. Print.
Original Source Listed:
William B. Wilson, Glimpses of the United States Military Corps and of Abraham Lincoln (Holmsburg, Pa.: privately printed, 1889), 20.
I'd probably question why he was paying so much attention to a child from the hips down and warn my kids about him...