“One of the most interestin’ accordin’ to my way of thinkin’ was a letter that came out from Mentor Graham, Lincoln’s old school-master. I don’t remember it exact, but near as I can recall he said Lincoln asked him one day when he was livin’ at his house going to school what he thought about the anger of the Lord, and then he went on to say that he had written something along that line and wished Mr. Graham would read it. Well, sir, Mr. Graham wrote in that letter that this thing Lincoln wrote proved God was too good to destroy the people He’d made, and that all the misery Adam brought on us by his sin had been wiped out by the atonement of Christ. Now mind that was an honest man writin’ that letter, a man who’d been Lincoln’s friend from the start. To be sure it was some time after the event--pretty near 40 years and I must say I always suspicion a man’s remembering anything very exact after 40 years. But one thing is sure, Mentor Graham knew Lincoln in those days, and that’s more than most of them that was arguin’ this thing did. “Always seemed to me about as reliable testimony as anybody offered. I contended that most likely Lincoln did write just what Mentor Graham said he did, and that the brethren thought it was dangerous doctrine to make out God was that good, and so they called him an infidel. Nothin’ riled those old fellows religiously like tryin’ to make out God didn’t damn everybody that didn’t believe according to the way they read the Scriptures. Seemed to hate to think about Mr. Lincoln’s God. I almost felt sometimes as if they’d rather a man would say there wa’n’t no God than to make him out a God of Mercy. “But sakes’ alive, Mentor Graham’s letter didn’t settle it. The boys used to get to rowin’ about it in here sometimes around the stove until I could hardly keep track of my perscriptions. The funniest thing you ever heard was one night when they were at it and an old fellow who used to live in New Salem dropped in, so they put it up to him; said he lived in New Salem in ’33; said he knew Lincoln. Wanted to know if he ever heard of his writin’ a book that Sam Hill burned up in the stove in his store. The old fellow listened all through without sayin’ a word, and when they was finished he said, solemn like, ‘Couldn’t have happened. Wa’n’t no stove. Sam Hill never had one.’ “Well, sir, you ought to seen their jaws drop. Just set starin’ at him and I thought I’d die a laffin’ to see ’em collapse. I wish Mr. Lincoln could have heard that old fellow, ‘Wa’n’t no stove.’ How he’d enjoyed that--‘Wa’n’t no stove.’ “But for all that I never regarded that witness over high. Of course Sam Hill must have had a stove otherwise there wouldn’t have been a place for folks to set around.