Men of much reading, and with a varied knowledge of life, especially if their minds have somewhat of critical culture, draw their materials for illustration in conversation from many sources. Abraham Lincoln’s education and reading were not such as to supply him with much unworn or refined literary illustration, so he used such material as he had--incidents and stories from the homely life of the West. I have observed that, in Europe, Scotchmen approach most nearly to Americans in this practical application of events and anecdotes. Lincoln excelled in the art of putting things aptly and concisely, and, like many old Romans, would place his whole argument in a brief droll narrative, the point of which would render his whole meaning clear to the dullest intellect. In their way, these were like the illustrated proverbs known as fables. Menenius Agrippa and Lincoln would have been congenial spirits. However coarse or humble the illustration might be, Mr. Lincoln never failed to convince even the most practised diplomatists or lawyers that he had a marvellous gift for grasping rapidly all the details of a difficulty, and for reducing this knowledge to a practical deduction, and, finally, for presenting the result in a concisely humorous illustration which impressed it on the memory. Mr. Lincoln was in a peculiar way an original thinker, without being entirely an originator, as a creative genius is. His stories were seldom or never his own inventions; hundreds of them were well known, but, in the words of Dr. Thompson, “however common his ideas were to other minds, however simple when stated, they bore the stamp of individuality, and became in some way his own.” During his life, and within a few months after his death, I made a large MS. collection of Lincolniana. Few of the stories were altogether new, but most were original in application. It is said that, being asked if a very stingy neighbour of his was a man of _means_, Mr. Lincoln replied that he ought to be, for he was about the _meanest_ man round there. This may or may not be authentic, but it is eminently Lincolnian. So with the jests of Tyll Eulenspiegel, or of any other great droll; he invariably becomes the nucleus of a certain kind of humour.