Lincoln’s intellect was of a wholly different cast. It had been devoted to the truth, with single-minded fealty, from boyhood. At a time when children’s thoughts usually run on play, his had begun to puzzle out the problems of life. Nothing but the facts would content him. And whether he acquired them by observation, dug them out of books, or picked them up from chance conversations, there was no rest until they had been brought well within the circle of his comprehension. Referring, at a maturer period, to this trait, he said:—
“Among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I don’t think I ever got angry at anything else in my life. But that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I often tried to, when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over,—until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it North, and bounded it South, and bounded it East, and bounded it West.”[ii-24]
This eagerness to see every side of a subject made trouble, at times, for the juvenile inquirer. His Cousin Dennis has illustrated this, in a characteristic little thumb-nail sketch. Chatting about those early days, in his old age, Mr. Hanks said:—
“Sometimes a preacher, ’r a circuit-ridin’ jedge, ’r lyyer, ’r a stump-speakin’ polytician, ’r a school-teacher’d come along. When one o’ them rode up, Tom’d go out an’ say,—‘’Light, stranger,’ like it was polite to do. Then Abe’d come lopin’ out on his long legs, throw one over the top rail and begin firin’ questions. Tom’d tell him to quit, but it didn’t do no good, so Tom’d have to bang him on the side o’ his head with his hat. Abe’d go off a spell an’ fire sticks at the snow-birds, an’ whistle like he didn’t keer. ‘Pap thinks it ain’t polite to ask folks so many questions,’ he’d say. ‘I reckon I wasn’t born to be polite, Denny. Thar’s so darned many things I want to know. An’ how else am I goin’ to git to know ’em?’ ”[ii-25]
The habit of asking questions remained with Lincoln to the end of the chapter. Frankly declaring himself ignorant concerning many things, on many occasions, he laid his face low, as the Persians say, at the threshold of truth. Indeed, no forceful character in recent history was so free from pride of mentality, so willing to admit that he did not understand some important matter, or that, perchance, a trivial one had escaped his knowledge. Taking stock of himself, during middle-life, for an inquiring biographer, he summed up his intellectual attainments in two words,—“education defective.” To a young friend who, at a still later period, pointed out an error of speech, he called himself “deplorably ignorant.” When an opponent taunted him with having “carefully written” an address, he replied before his next audience: “I admit that it was. I am not a master of language. I have not a fine education.”
And when he had composed a certain notable letter, he laid it before a learned neighbor, with the words: “I think it is all right, but grammar, you know, is not my stronghold; and as several persons will probably read that little thing, I wish you would look it over carefully, and see if it needs doctoring anywhere.”
Perhaps we should add that the missive did need a touch of “doctoring,” and that the writer submitted to the treatment with good grace. Nor was he less ingenuous on other occasions. One day in court a lawyer, quoting a Latin maxim, bowed to him and said: “That is so, is it not, Mr. Lincoln?”
To which he answered: “If that’s Latin, you had better call another witness.”
So, during a visit by a distinguished company, when one gentleman turned to another and repeated a quotation from the ancient classics, Lincoln leaned forward in his chair, looked inquiringly at them, and remarked, with a smile: “Which, I suppose you are both aware, I do not understand.”
Equally free from false pretense concerning his work at the bar, he would turn the compliment of an admirer with some such phrase as, “Oh, I am only a mast-fed lawyer.”