ASK ABE

Dear President Lincoln: The panhandlers in this town are out of control! The other day, one of them yelled at me when I wouldn't give him a dollar. I was so rattled that I couldn't finish my mochaccino. Won't someone please do something to stop this menace?
One of the unintended consequences of our glorious, as-God-intended victory in the War Between the States was the flood of shell-shocked veterans and dislocated refugees that poured into our cities. Being a humane society, we did not shunt these people off to prison or drown them in the river, as was the fashion just a decade before. Rather, we spared no expense to create magnificent workhouses where these poor souls found shelter, nourishment and respectability as they worked 12 hours a day making barrel hoops and mop handles. I remember well the grateful looks on their faces as they pressed against the glass, eight and nine deep, to get a glimpse of my carriage as it passed. Solving the problem isn't so simple for your generation, as the do-gooders have made it impossible to do anything but hand out hugs and sandwiches, obligation-free, to these wretches. How appalling! Just because you live on the street doesn't mean you own it.