Well, somehow, as time went on, just watchin’ Mr. Lincoln so dead in earnest begun to make me feel queer. And I got serious. Never’d been so but twict before in my life--once at a revival and next time when I thought I wasn’t goin’ to git Ma. But I joined the church and Ma and me got married, and after that there didn’t seem to be anything left to worry about. And then this comes along, and I’ll be blamed if it didn’t git so I couldn’t hear enough of it. Night after night, when they was in here discussin’, every minute I wa’n’t puttin’ up something, I was listenin’ to ’em. And then I took to runnin’ around to hear the speeches. I was up to Bloomington in ’56 the time Lincoln went over to the Republicans. The old Whigs down here had been considerable worried for fear he would quit ’em, and I must say it worried. I never’d had any use for a man who left his party. Couldn’t understand it. Seemed to me then that ’twa’n’t no better than gittin’ a divorce from your wife. I’ve changed my views since about several things. Had to jump the party myself two or three times, and I’ve seen women-- Well, all I’ve got to say is, that I ain’t judgin’ the man that gits a divorce from ’em. As I was sayin’, I was up to Bloomington that night. Nobody that didn’t hear that speech ever knows what Abraham Lincoln could do. Lots of ’em will tell you he was homely. Seems to me sometimes that’s about all some folks around here has to tell about Abraham Lincoln. “Yes, I knowed him,” they say. “He was the homeliest man in Sangamon County.” Well, now, don’t you make no mistake. The folks that don’t tell you nuthin’ but that never knowed Mr. Lincoln. Mebbe they’d seen him, but they never knowed him. He wa’n’t homely. There’s no denyin’ he was long and lean, and he didn’t always stand straight and he wasn’t pertikeler about his clothes, but that night up to Bloomington in ten minutes after he struck that platform, I tell you he was the handsomest man I ever see. He knew what he was doin’ that night. He knew he was cuttin’ loose. He knew them old Whigs was goin’ to have it in for him for doin’ it, and he meant to show ’em he didn’t care a red cent what they thought. He knew there was a lot of fools in that new party he was joinin’--the kind that’s always takin’ up with every new thing comes along to git something to orate about. He saw clear as day that if they got started right that night, he’d got to fire ’em up; and so he threw back his shoulders and lit in.