“Makes men seem pretty small, don’t it? God seems to wipe ’em out as careless like as if He were cleanin’ a slate. How could He care and do that? It made such a mite of a man, no better’n a fly. That’s what bothered Mr. Lincoln. I know how he felt. That’s the way it hit me when I first began to understand all the stars were worlds like ours. What I couldn’t see and can’t now is how we can be so blame sure ours is the only world with men on. And if they’re others and they’re wiped out regular like we are, well it knocked me all of a heap at first, ’peared to me mighty unlikely that God knew anything about _me_. “I expect Mr. Lincoln felt something like that when he studied how old the world was and how one set of ruins was piled on top of another. “Then there was another thing. Lots of those old cities and old nations wa’n’t Christian at all, and yet accordin’ to the ruins it looked as if the people was just as happy, knew just as much, had just as good laws as any Christian nation now; some of them a blamed sight better. Now how was a boy like Lincoln going to handle a problem like that? Well I guess for a time he handled it like the man who wrote about the Ruins. Never seemed queer to me he should have written a free-thinkin’ book after that kind of readin’. I reckon he had to write something to get his head clear. Allus had to have things clear. “You know that story of course about that book. First time I ever heard it was back in 1846 when him and Elder Cartwright was runnin’ for Congress. You know about Cartwright? Well, sir, he made his campaign against Lincoln in ’46, not on politics at all--made it on chargin’ him with bein’ an infidel because he wa’n’t a church member and because he said Mr. Lincoln had written a free thought book when he was a boy. He kept it up until along in the fall Mr. Lincoln shut him up good. He’d gone down to where Cartwright lived to make a political speech and some of us went along. Cartwright was runnin’ a revival, and long in the evening before startin’ home we went in and set in the back of the church. When it came time to ask sinners to come forward, the elder got pretty excited. ‘Where be you goin’?’ he shouted. ‘To Hell if you don’t repent and come to this altar.’ At last he began to call on Mr. Lincoln to come forward. Well, you know nobody likes to be called out like that right in meetin’. Mr. Lincoln didn’t budge, just set there. The elder he kept it up. Finally he shouted, ‘If Mr. Lincoln ain’t goin’ to repent and go to Heaven, where is he goin’?’ Intimatin’, I suppose, that he was headed for Hell. ‘Where be you goin’, Mr. Lincoln?’ he shouted. “Well, sir, at that Mr. Lincoln rose up and said quiet like: “‘I’m goin’ to Congress.’