All of his comrades remembered his stories and his clearness in argument. "When he appeared in company," says Nat Grigsby, "the boys would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was figurative in his speech, talks, and conversation. He argued much from analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories, maxims, tales, and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or idea by some story that was plain and near us, that we might instantly see the force and bearing of what he said."
There is one other testimony to his character as a boy which should not be omitted. It is that of his step-mother:
"Abe was a good boy, and I can say, what scarcely one woman—a mother—can say in a thousand, Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life.... His mind and mine—what little I had—seemed to run together. He was here after he was elected President. He was a dutiful son to me always. I think he loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw, or expect to see."
PIGEON CREEK CHURCH.
From a photograph loaned by W.W. Admire of Chicago. This little log church or "meetin' house" is where the Lincolns attended services in Indiana. The pulpit is said to have been made by Thomas Lincoln. The building was razed about fifteen years ago, after having been used for several years as a tobacco barn.
These are impressions of Mr. Lincoln gathered in Indiana thirty years ago, when his companions were alive. To-day there are people living in Spencer County who were small boys when he was a large one, and who preserve curiously interesting impressions of him. A representative of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE who has recently gone in detail over the ground of Lincoln's early life, says: "The people who live in Spencer County are interested in any one who is interested in Abraham Lincoln." They showed her the flooring he whip-sawed, the mantles, doors, and window-casings he helped make, the rails he split, the cabinets he and his father made, and scores of relics cut from planks and rails he handled. They told what they remembered of his rhymes and how he would walk miles to hear a speech or sermon, and, returning, would repeat the whole in "putty good imitation." Many remembered his coming evenings to sit around the fireplace with their older brothers and sisters, and the stories he told and the pranks he played there until ordered home by the elders of the household.
Captain John Lamar who was a very small boy in one of the families where Lincoln was well known, has many interesting reminiscences which he is fond of repeating. "He told me of riding to mill with his father one very hot day. As they drove along the hot road they saw a boy sitting on the top rail of an old-fashioned stake-and-rider worm fence. When they came close they saw that the boy was reading, and had not noticed their approach. His father, turning to him, said: 'John, look at that boy yonder, and mark my words, he will make a smart man out of himself. I may not see it, but you'll see if my words don't come true.' The boy was Abraham Lincoln."
