“He traded here. I’ve got his accounts now. See here, ‘quinine, quinine, quinine.’ Greatest hand to buy quinine you ever seen. Give it to his constituents. Oh, he knew how to be popular, Mr. Lincoln did. Cutest man in politics. I wan’t a Whig. I was then and I am now a Democrat, a real old-fashioned Jackson Democrat, and my blood just would rise up sometimes hearin’ him discuss. He was a dangerous man—a durned dangerous man to have agin you. He’d make you think a thing when you knew it wan’t so, and cute! Why, he’d just slide in when you wan’t expectin’ it and do some unexpected thing that just’d make you laugh, and then he’d get your vote. You’d vote for him because you liked him—just because you liked him and because he was so all-fired smart, and do it when you knew he was wrong and it was agin the interest of the country. “Tell stories? Nobody ever could beat him at that, and how he’d enjoy ’em, just slap his hands on his knees and jump up and turn around and then set down, laughin’ to kill. Greatest man to git new yarns that ever lived, always askin’, ‘Heard any new stories, Billy?’ And if I had I’d trot ’em out, and how he’d laugh. Often and often when I’ve told him something new and he’d kin’ a forgit how it went, he’d come in and say, ‘Billy, how was that story you’se tellin’ me?’ and then I’d tell it all over. “He was away a lot, you know, ridin’ the circuit along with some right smart lawyers. They had great doin’s. Nuthin’ to do evenings but to set around the tavern stove tellin’ stories. That was enough when Lincoln was there. They was all lost without him. Old Judge Davis was boss of that lot, and he never would settle down till Lincoln got around. I’ve heard ’em laugh lots of times how the Judge would fuss around and keep askin’, ‘Where’s Mr. Lincoln, why don’t Mr. Lincoln come? Somebody go and find Lincoln,’ and when Lincoln came he would just settle back and get him started to yarning, and there they’d set half the night. “When he got home he’d come right in here first time he was downtown and tell me every blamed yarn he’d heard. Whole crowd would get in here sometimes and talk over the trip, and I tell you it was something to hear ’em laugh. You could tell how Lincoln kept things stirred up. He was so blamed quick. Ever hear Judge Weldon tell that story about what Lincoln said one day up to Bloomington when they was takin’ up a subscription to buy Jim Wheeler a new pair of pants? No? Well, perhaps I oughten to tell it to you, ma says it ain’t nice. It makes me mad to hear people objectin’ to Mr. Lincoln’s stories. Mebbe he did say words you wouldn’t expect to hear at a church supper, but he never put no meanin’ into ’em that wouldn’t ‘a’ been fit for the minister to put into a sermon, and that’s a blamed sight more’n you can say of a lot of stories I’ve heard some of the people tell who stick up their noses at Mr. Lincoln’s yarns.