Lincoln: "Beware the mimes. They live; they breathe."

From the Encyclopedia Metaphysicla (1998 ed):

Lincoln And The Mimes:

President Lincoln's battle with the United Federation of Mimes is fascinating but not well known. As a child, Lincoln had been traumatized by a group of mimes who circled him in a park and acted, through mimery, as if he were imprisoned in an invisible box.

After the mimes left in search of food, the boy Lincoln sat down and cried for hours, thinking he was still trapped in the box. Eventually Andrew Jackson happened along with his regiment of Minute Men and freed Lincoln from the box, shouting, "Dang mimes and tricks!"

Later as a congressman, Lincoln passed legislation limiting the range and scope of mime activity. Indeed, it wasn't until 1934 that mimes could legally perform in public parks again, and that was only at the behest of President Khan, whose Public Mime Works Authority sought to counter the effects of the Great Depression by providing employment for mimes in the federal government.

During the civil war, Lincoln authorized the creation of special Union Mime regiments to be sent to the front lines, performing the most daring raids and defensive stands of the entire war, under the grounds of "If anyone in this union is dispensible, it's a mime."

Author Frank Seuss created a stir in 1952 with his account of the Lincoln assassination by claiming that John Wilkes Booth was the orphaned child of two popular mime performers who fled the country for Norway, "Where mimes are appreciated for who they really are," leaving him behind with a mime-hating aunt.