“I don’t see as it’s any use fur you an’ me to argy this thing, Rhett. We don’t git no nearer together. We’ve each got our opinions, an’ so fur as I can see, we’re likely to keep ’em. But you’ve called Abe Lincoln a coward. Now, I want to tell you somethin’. I knowed Lincoln out there in New Salem when he was runnin’ Denton Offut’s store. I’ve told ye that before. An’ I’ve told ye how the Clary’s Grove boys come down one day to match Jack Armstrong ag’inst Lincoln in a wrastlin’ match. An’ how, when Jack tried a foul, Abe got mad, an’ ketched him by the throat an’ give him the blamedest shakin’ up he ever hed in his life. I didn’t see that, but I know the story’s straight. An’ I’ve told ye how he straddled a log with a rope tied to it, an’ pushed out into the Sangamon River at flood, that spring after the deep snow, an’ went tearin’ down with the current, an’ saved the lives o’ three men a-clingin’ to a tree-top in midstream, an’ come near a-losin’ of his own life a-doin’ of it. I seen him do that myself. An’ one night, when we was settin’ round the stove in Offut’s store, swoppin’ yarns, Jim Hanniwell come in considable the worse fur liquor, an’ begun a-cussin’ an’ a-swearin’ like he us’ally did when he was drunk. An’ some women come in to buy somethin’, an’ Jim never stopped, an’ Lincoln says, ‘Jim, that’ll do, they’s women here.’ An’ Jim allowed he’d say what he blame pleased, women or no women, an’ he did. An’ w’en the women was gone, Lincoln come out aroun’ from behind the counter an’ says, ‘Jim, somebody’s got to give you a lickin’ an’ it might as well be me as anybody.’ An’ he took him an’ chucked him out-doors, an’ throwed him into the mud in the road, an’ rubbed dog-fennel into his mouth, till the feller yelled fur mercy. I seen him do that too. Mebbe I’ve told ye all these things before, an’ mebbe I ain’t; but I never told you, nor no one else, what I’m goin’ to tell ye now, an’ I wouldn’t tell ye this ef you hadn’t ’a’ said Abe Lincoln was heartless an’ a coward. It was in that same winter of ’32. I was out with the Clary’s Grove boys one night, an’ the liquor went round perty free, an’ to make a long story short, I was layin’ in a snow-bank alongside the road, about midnight, half a mile from my cabin, dead drunk, an’ the weather around zero. An’ Abe Lincoln happened along that way an’ found me. It ain’t a nice story, Rhett, so fur’s I’m concerned, but I’m a-talkin’ plain to-night. He wasn’t under no obligation to me. I wasn’t much account them days, anyway. But he turned me over an’ seen who I wuz an’ what the matter wuz, an’ then he twisted me up onto his long back, Abe Lincoln did, an’ toted me that hull half-mile up-hill, in zero weather, to my home an’ my wife, God bless her, an’ he dropped me on the bed an’ he says, ‘Let him sleep it off, Mis’ Mills; he’ll feel better in the mornin’; an’ when he wakes up tell him Abe Lincoln asks him not to drink any more.’