3. Lamon, 13; N. and H., 1, 25.
4. N. and H., 1, 25.
5. Gore, 221-225.
6. Herndon, 15.
7. Gore, 66, 70-74, 79, 83-84, 116, 151-154, 204, 226-230, for all this group of anecdotes.
The evidence with regard to all the early part of Lincoln's life is peculiar in this, that it is reminiscence not written down until the subject had become famous. Dogmatic certainty with regard to the details is scarcely possible. The best one can do in weighing any of the versions of his early days is to inquire closely as to whether all its parts bang naturally together, whether they really cohere. There is a body of anecdotes told by an old mountaineer, Austin Gollaher, who knew Lincoln as a boy, and these have been collected and recently put into print. Of course, they are not "documented" evidence. Some students are for brushing them aside. But there is one important argument in their favor. They are coherent; the boy they describe is a real person and his personality is sustained. If he is a fiction and not a memory, the old mountaineer was a literary artist—far more the artist than one finds it easy to believe.
8. Gore, 84-95; Lamon, 16; Herndon, 16.
9. Gore, 181-182, 296, 303-316; Lamon, 19-20; N. and H., I, 28-29.
II. THE MYSTERIOUS YOUTH.
1. N. and H., I, 32-34.