LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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[“Come and set by the stove by the hour and tell stories and talk and argue”]4
[“Horace Greeley, he came in here to buy quinine”]16
[“Aunt Sally, you couldn’t a done nuthin’ which would have pleased me better”]18
[“He just talked to us that time out of his heart”]24
[“You’re actin’ like a lot of cowards. You’ve helped make this war, and you’ve got to help fight it”]26
[“We went out on the back stoop and sat down and talked and talked”]30

[HE KNEW LINCOLN]

“He has the pass-key to hearts, to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs.”

—Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Answerer.”

“Did I know Lincoln? Well, I should say. See that chair there? Take it, set down. That’s right. Comfortable, ain’t it? Well, sir, Abraham Lincoln has set in that chair hours, him and Little ‘Doug,’ and Logan and Judge Davis, all of ’em, all the big men in this State, set in that chair. See them marks? Whittlin’. Judge Logan did it, all-firedest man to whittle. Always cuttin’ away at something. I just got that chair new, paid six dollars for it, and I be blamed if I didn’t come in this store and find him slashin’ right into that arm. I picked up a stick and said: ‘Here, Judge, s’posin’ you cut this.’ He just looked at me and then flounced out, mad as a wet hen. Mr. Lincoln was here, and you ought to heard him tee-hee. He was always here. [Come and set by the stove by the hour and tell stories and talk and argue.] I’d ruther heard the debates them men had around this old stove than heard Webster and Clay and Calhoun and the whole United States Senate. There wa’n’t never a United States Senate that could beat just what I’ve heard right here in this room with Lincoln settin’ in that very chair where you are this minute.