“Did I know Lincoln? Well, I should say. See that chair there? Take it, set down. That’s right. Comfortable, ain’t it? Well, sir, Abraham Lincoln has set in that chair hours, him and Little ‘Doug,’ and Logan and Judge Davis, all of ’em, all the big men in this State, set in that chair. See them marks? Whittlin’. Judge Logan did it, all-firedest man to whittle. Always cuttin’ away at something. I just got that chair new, paid six dollars for it, and I be blamed if I didn’t come in this store and find him slashin’ right into that arm. I picked up a stick and said: ‘Here, Judge, s’posin’ you cut this.’ He just looked at me and then flounced out, mad as a wet hen. Mr. Lincoln was here, and you ought to heard him tee-hee. He was always here. Come and set by the stove by the hour and tell stories and talk and argue. I’d ruther heard the debates them men had around this old stove than heard Webster and Clay and Calhoun and the whole United States Senate. There wa’n’t never a United States Senate that could beat just what I’ve heard right here in this room with Lincoln settin’ in that very chair where you are this minute. [Illustration: “_Come and set by the stove by the hour and tell stories and talk and argue_”] “He traded here. I’ve got his accounts now. See here, ‘quinine, quinine, quinine.’ Greatest hand to buy quinine you ever see. Give it to his constituents. Oh, he knew how to be popular, Mr. Lincoln did. Cutest man in politics. I wa’n’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 wa’n’t so, and cute! Why, he’d just slide in when you wa’n’t expectin’ it and do some unexpected thing that u’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 about that story you’se tellin’ me?’ and then I’d tell it all over.