“Do you know I think that book took an awful grip on Mr. Lincoln. I reckon it was the first time he had ever realized how long the world’s been runnin’; how many lots of men have lived and settled countries and built cities and how time and time again they’ve all been wiped out. Mr. Lincoln couldn’t get over that. I’ve heard him talk about how old the world was time and time again, how nothing lasted—men—cities—nations. One set on top of another—men comin’ along just as interested and busy as we are, in doin’ things, and then little by little all they done passin’ away.
“He was always speculatin’ about that kind of thing. I remember in ’48 when he came back from Congress he stopped to see Niagara Falls. Well, sir, when he got home he couldn’t talk about anything else for days, seemed to knock politics clean out of his mind. He’d sit there that fall in that chair you’re in and talk and talk about it. Talk just like it’s printed in those books his secretary got up. I never cared myself for all those articles they wrote. Wrong, am I? Mebbe so, but there wa’n’t enough of Mr. Lincoln in ’em to suit me. I wanted to know what he said about everything in his own words. But I tell you when I saw the books with the things he had said and wrote all brought together nice and neat, and one after another, I just took to that. I’ve got ’em here in my desk, often read ’em and lots of it sounds just as natural, almost hear him sayin’ it, just as if he was settin’ here by the stove.
“Now what he tells about Niagara in the book is like that—just as if he was here. I can hear him sayin’: ‘Why, Billy, when Columbus first landed here, when Christ suffered on the Cross, when Moses crossed dry-shod through the Red Sea, even when Adam was first made, Niagara was roarin’ away. He’d talk in here just as it is printed there; how the big beasts whose bones they’ve found in mounds must have seen the falls, how it’s older than them and older than the first race of men. They’re all dead and gone, not even bones of many of ’em left, and yet there’s Niagara boomin’ away fresh as ever.
“He used to prove by the way the water had worn away the rocks that the world was at least fourteen thousand years old. A long spell, but folks tell me it ain’t nothin’ to what is bein’ estimated now.
“Makes men seem pretty small, don’t it? God seems to wipe ’em out as careless like as if He were cleanin’ a slate. How could He care and do that? It made such a mite of a man, no better’n a fly. That’s what bothered Mr. Lincoln. I know how he felt. That’s the way it hit me when I first began to understand all the stars were worlds like ours. What I couldn’t see and can’t now is how we can be so blame sure ours is the only world with men on. And if they’re others and they’re wiped out regular like we are, well it knocked me all of a heap at first, ’peared to me mighty unlikely that God knew anything about me.
“I expect Mr. Lincoln felt something like that when he studied how old the world was and how one set of ruins was piled on top of another.
“Then there was another thing. Lots of those old cities and old nations wa’n’t Christian at all, and yet accordin’ to the ruins it looked as if the people was just as happy, knew just as much, had just as good laws as any Christian nation now; some of them a blamed sight better. Now how was a boy like Lincoln going to handle a problem like that? Well I guess for a time he handled it like the man who wrote about the Ruins. Never seemed queer to me he should have written a free-thinkin’ book after that kind of readin’. I reckon he had to write something to get his head clear. Allus had to have things clear.
“You know that story of course about that book. First time I ever heard it was back in 1846 when him and Elder Cartwright was runnin’ for Congress. You know about Cartwright? Well, sir, he made his campaign against Lincoln in ’46, not on politics at all—made it on chargin’ him with bein’ an infidel because he wa’n’t a church member and because he said Mr. Lincoln had written a free thought book when he was a boy. He kept it up until along in the fall Mr. Lincoln shut him up good. He’d gone down to where Cartwright lived to make a political speech and some of us went along. Cartwright was runnin’ a revival, and long in the evening before startin’ home we went in and set in the back of the church. When it came time to ask sinners to come forward, the elder got pretty excited. ‘Where be you goin’?’ he shouted. ‘To Hell if you don’t repent and come to this altar.’ At last he began to call on Mr. Lincoln to come forward. Well, you know nobody likes to be called out like that right in meetin’. Mr. Lincoln didn’t budge, just set there. The elder he kept it up. Finally he shouted, ‘If Mr. Lincoln ain’t goin’ to repent and go to Heaven, where is he goin’?’ Intimatin’, I suppose, that he was headed for Hell. ‘Where be you goin’, Mr. Lincoln?’ he shouted.
“Well, sir, at that Mr. Lincoln rose up and said quiet like:
“‘I’m goin’ to Congress.’