“He pulled out, of course, but he never got over havin’ spells of terrible gloom. I expect there was always a good many nights up to the end when he wondered if life was worth keepin’. Black moods took him and he’d go days not hardly speakin’ to people--come in here--set by the stove--not sayin’ a word--get up--go out--hardly noticin’ you. Boys understood, used to say ‘Mr. Lincoln’s got the blues.’ “Curious how quick things changed with him. He’d be settin’ here, laffin’ and jokin’, tellin’ stories and somebody’d drop some little thing, nobody else would think about, and suddent his eyes would go sad and his face broodin’ and he’d stop talkin’ or like as not get up and go out. I don’t mean to say this happened often. Of course that wa’n’t so; as I’ve told you no end of times, he was the best company that ever was--the fullest of stories and jokes, and nobody could talk serious like him. You could listen forever when he’d get to arguin’, but spite of all that you knew somehow he was a lonely man who had to fight hard to keep up his feelin’ that life was worth goin’ on with. Gave you queer feelin’ about him--you knew he was different from the others, and it kept you from bein’ over-familiar. “There was a man in here the other day I hadn’t seen for years--used to be a conductor between here and Chicago--knew him well. It tickled him to death to have me set him in that chair you’re in--looked it all over, said it seemed as if he could just see Mr. Lincoln settin’ there. Well, he got to talkin’ about all the big bugs that used to travel with him, Little Dug, Judge Davis, Logan, Swett, Welden, and all the rest; and he said something about Mr. Lincoln that shows how he struck ordinary people. He said Lincoln was the most folksy of any of them, but that there was something about him that made everybody stand a little in awe of him. You could get near him in a sort of neighborly way, as though you had always known him, but there was something tremendous between you and him all the time. “This man said he had eaten with him many times at the railroad eatin’ houses. Everybody tried to get near Lincoln when he was eatin’, because he was such good company, but they looked at him with a kind of wonder, couldn’t exactly make him out. Sometimes there was a dreadful loneliness in his look, and the boys used to wonder what he was thinkin’ about. Whatever it was, he was thinkin’ all alone. No one was afraid of him, but there was something about him that made plain folks feel toward him a good deal as a child feels toward his father, because you know every child looks upon his father as a wonderful man.