"Did you ever write out a story in your mind? I did when I was little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they were the first of the kind I ever heard. I took a great fancy to one of the girls; and when they were gone I thought of her a good deal, and one day, when I was sitting out in the sun by the house, I wrote out a story in my mind.
"I thought I took my father's horse and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were surprised to see me.
"I talked with the girl and persuaded her to elope with me; and that night I put her on my horse and we started off across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and when we rode up we found it was one we had left a few hours before and went in.
"The next night we tried again, and the same thing happened—the horse came back to the same place; and then we concluded we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father that he ought to give her to me.
"I always meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began once; but I concluded it was not much of a story.
"But I think that was the beginning of love with me."
HOW ABE CAME TO OWN WEEMS'S "LIFE OF WASHINGTON"
Abe's chief delight, if permitted to do so, was to lie in the shade of some inviting tree and read. He liked to lie on his stomach before the fire at night, and often read as long as this flickering light lasted. He sometimes took a book to bed to read as soon as the morning light began to come through the chinks between the logs beside his bed. He once placed a book between the logs to have it handy in the morning, and a storm came up and soaked it with dirty water from the "mud-daubed" mortar, plastered between the logs of the cabin.
The book happened to be Weems's "Life of Washington." Abe was in a sad dilemma. What could he say to the owner of the book, which he had borrowed from the meanest man in the neighborhood, Josiah Crawford, who was so unpopular that he went by the nickname of "Old Blue Nose"?
The only course was to show the angry owner his precious volume, warped and stained as it was, and offer to do anything he could to repay him.