would compete with him in it.[10] From his boyhood, he was extremely temperate. Those who have spoken most freely of his faults admit that, in a country where a whiskey-jug was kept in every house, Lincoln never touched spirits except to avoid giving offence. His stepmother thought he was temperate to a fault. Meanwhile, as the youth grew apace, the neighbouring village of Gentryville had grown with him. Books and cultivated society became more accessible. The great man of the place was a Mr. Jones, the storekeeper, whose shop supplied all kinds of goods required by farmers. Mr. Jones took a liking to young Lincoln, employed him sometimes, taught him politics, giving him deep impressions in favour of Andrew Jackson, the representative of the Democratic party, and finally awoke Abraham’s ambition by admiring him, and predicting that he would some day be a great man. Another friend was John Baldwin, the village blacksmith, who was, even for a Western American wag, wonderfully clever at a jest, and possessed of an inexhaustible fund of stories. It was from John Baldwin that Lincoln derived a great number of the quaint anecdotes with which he was accustomed in after years to illustrate his arguments. His memory contained thousands of these drolleries; so that, eventually, there was no topic of conversation which did not “put him in mind of a little story.” In some other respects, his acquisitions were less useful. Though he knew a vast number of ballads, he could not sing one; and though a reader of Burns, certain of his own satires and songs, levelled at some neighbours who had slighted him, were mere doggerel, wanting every merit, and very bitter. But, about 1827, he contributed an article on temperance and another on American politics to two newspapers, published in Ohio. From the praise awarded by a lawyer, named Pritchard, to the political article, it would appear to have been very well written. Even in this first essay in politics, Lincoln urged the principle by which he became famous, and for which he died--adherence to the constitution and the integrity of the American Union.