"'Why,' said my brother,'that's all that made him go.'"
"Now if Mr. Chase (the Secretary of the Treasury) has a presidential 'chin fly' biting him, I'm not going to knock it off, if it will only make his department go."
"OLD BLUE NOSE'S" HIRED MAN
It seemed to be the "irony of fate" that Abe should have to work for "Old Blue Nose" as a farm hand. But the lad liked Mrs. Crawford, and Lincoln's sister Nancy lived there, at the same time, as maid-of-all-work. Another attraction, the Crawford family was rich, in Abe's eyes, in possessing several books, which he was glad of the chance to read.
Mrs. Crawford told many things about young Lincoln that might otherwise have been lost. She said "Abe was very polite, in his awkward way, taking off his hat to me and bowing. He was a sensitive lad, never coming where he was not wanted. He was tender and kind—like his sister.
"He liked to hang around and gossip and joke with the women. After he had wasted too much time this way, he would exclaim:
"'Well, this won't buy the child a coat,' and the long-legged hired boy would stride away and catch up with the others."
One day when he was asked to kill a hog, Abe answered promptly that he had never done that, "but if you'll risk the hog, I'll risk myself!"
Mrs. Crawford told also about "going to meeting" in those primitive days:
"At that time we thought it nothing to go eight or ten miles. The ladies did not stop for the want of a shawl or riding dress, or horses. In the winter time they would put on their husbands' old overcoats, wrap up their little ones, and take two or three of them on their beasts, while their husbands would walk.