“Bob, a little air will do you good. I've had enough of the old boys for a while, and I'm going to talk to somebody any own age.”
Stephen was halfway down the corridor when he discovered that he had forgotten his hat. As he returned he heard somebody say:
“If that ain't just like Abe. He stopped to pull a flea out of his stocking when he was going to fight that duel with Shields, and now he's walking with boys before a debate with the smartest man in this country. And there's heaps of things he ought to discuss with us.”
“Reckon we haven't got much to do with it,” said another, half laughing, half rueful. “There's some things Abe won't stand.”
From the stairs Stephen saw Mr. Lincoln threading his way through the crowd below, laughing at one, pausing to lay his hand on the shoulder of another, and replying to a rough sally of a third to make the place a tumult of guffaws. But none had the temerity to follow him. When Stephen caught up with him in the little country street, he was talking earnestly to Mr. Hill, the young reporter of the Press and Tribune. And what do you think was the subject? The red comet in the sky that night. Stephen kept pace in silence with Mr. Lincoln's strides, another shock in store for him. This rail-splitter, this postmaster, this flat-boatman, whom he had not credited with a knowledge of the New Code, was talking Astronomy. And strange to say, Mr. Brice was learning.
“Bob,” said Mr. Lincoln, “can you elucidate the problem of the three bodies?”
To Stephen's surprise, Mr. Hill elucidated.
The talk then fell upon novels and stories, a few of which Mr. Lincoln seemed to have read. He spoke, among others, of the “Gold Bug.” “The story is grand,” said he, “but it might as well have been written of Robinson Crusoe's island. What a fellow wants in a book is to know where he is. There are not many novels, or ancient works for that matter, that put you down anywhere.”
“There is that genuine fragment which Cicero has preserved from a last work of Aristotle,” said Mr. Hill, slyly. “'If there were beings who lived in the depths of the earth, and could emerge through the open fissures, and could suddenly behold the earth, the sea, and the—vault of heaven—'”
“But you—you impostor,” cried Mr. Lincoln, interrupting, “you're giving us Humboldt's Cosmos.”