He had many pass-keys--wrath, magnanimity, shrewdness, patience, clarity of judgment, humor, resolve; and in the end, one or the other or all together opened every closed door, and he sat down at home with men of the most divergent view and experience: the bully, the scholarly, the cunning, the pious, the ambitious, the selfish, the great, the weak, the boy, the man. Particularly was Lincoln at home with men like the Billy Brown of these pages, men whose native grain had not been obscured by polish and oil. There were many of them in his time in Illinois, plying their trades or professions more or less busily, but never allowing industry to interfere with opportunities for companionship. They were men of shrewdness, humor, usually modest, not over-weighted with ambition. Their appetite for talk, for politics, for reports on human exhibits of all sorts, never dulled. Their love of companionship outstripped even their naturally intolerant partisanship. These men, unconsciously for the most part, resisted the social veneering that, beginning in Illinois in Lincoln’s day, rapidly overlaid the state. In his first contact with Springfield in the ’30’s he remarked the “flourishing about in carriages,” the separation of people into groups according to money, antecedents, social etiquette. He never allowed convention, address, ceremony, however foreign to him, to interfere with his human relations--he went over or around them. But, natural man that he was, he found a special freedom with those in whom the essence of human nature remained unmixed and uncorked. The original of Billy Brown was such a man. He was still keeping his drug store in Springfield in the ’90’s when the writer made studies there for a “Life of Lincoln.” She passed many an hour in Lincoln’s chair, while Billy, tipped back in something less precious, talked. There were Billy Browns in other towns--Bloomington, Princeton, Quincy, Chicago. Their memory of Mr. Lincoln was among the most precious and satisfying things in their lives. When business was dull or the day rainy and consequently there were few or no interruptions, the talk you started by questions soon became a soliloquy. Head against the wall, feet on desk, eyes far away, voice softened, they re-lived the old friendship. Their memories were tender, reverent but singularly devoid of the thing that we call hero-worship. Mr. Lincoln remained too real to them, too interesting and companionable.