With more willingness, perhaps, than if the services were to be conducted by a grown-up minister, the other young people in the family enter and sit down in decorous style, while Abe pulls down the Bible, reads a passage, and gives out a hymn. This is sung with more earnestness than musical taste, and then the young preacher begins his sermon.
I am sure we should all like to have been present, and should have listened with interest while the gaunt, awkward boy, gesticulating with his long arms, delivered a homily not original with himself, but no doubt marked by some of his peculiarities.
We are told that this young audience, the girls probably, were sometimes affected to tears. One might have been tempted to predict that the boy would develop into a preacher when he grew to man’s estate. But Abe did not confine himself to “preaching.” He was just as fond of other kinds of public speaking. Sometimes in the harvest field he mounted a stump and began to talk on political subjects.
More than once Thomas Lincoln, going out to the field, found work at a standstill, and a little group collected at one point, Abe being the central figure.
“What’s all this?” he would ask angrily.
“It’s Abe,” one of the hands would answer. “He’s givin’ us a rousin’ speech on politics.”
“I’ll rouse him!” said the incensed father. “Only let me get at him!”
So he would push his way into the crowd unseen by Abe, and would suddenly seize his son by the collar and drag him from his extemporized rostrum.
“Now go to work!” he would exclaim in irritation. “You can’t make your living by talking.”
Abe, with a comical smile, would close his speech, to resume it on some more auspicious occasion.