If you take a class on public speaking, they always recommend that you open with an Ice Breaker, because its been proven that people are more receptive to a speaker if he or she gets them to laugh.
Abraham Lincoln must have taken one of those classes because he knew that laughter is good medicine. In writing about Lincoln's Civil War years, author Richard Hanser says that on September 22, 1862, the War Cabinet was summoned to the White House for a special session. Lincoln was reading a book as everyone came in. Secretary of War Stanton later said this of the meeting:
"Finally the president turned to us and said, 'Gentlemen, did you ever read anything of Artimus Ward? Let me read a chapter that is very funny.'"
The president then read aloud a skit called "Highhanded Outrage at Utica." Stanton was furious, but Lincoln read on and, at the end, he laughed heartily. "Gentlemen," he asked, "why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die. And you need this medicine as much as I do." It was at this same session that the president pulled a paper from his tall hat and read aloud the now immortalized Emancipation Proclamation.
