This same Miss Roby it was who said of Lincoln, "He was better read then than the world knows or is likely to know exactly.... He often and often commented or talked to me about what he had read--seemed to read it out of the book as he went along--did so to others. He was the learned boy among us unlearned folks. He took great pains to explain; could do it so simply. He was diffident then, too." [Illustration: JOHN W. LAMAR. Mr. Lamar was one of the "small boys" of Spencer County when Lincoln left Indiana, but old enough to have seen much of him and to have known his characteristics and his reputation in the county. He is still living near his old home, and gave our representative in Indiana interesting reminiscences which are incorporated into the present article.] [Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1860. From an ambrotype in the possession of Mr. Marcus L. Ward of Newark, New Jersey. This portrait of Mr. Lincoln was made in Springfield, Illinois, on May 20, 1860, for the late Hon. Marcus L. Ward, Governor of New Jersey. Mr. Ward had gone down to Springfield to see Mr. Lincoln, and while there asked him for his picture. The President-elect replied that he had no picture which was satisfactory, but would gladly sit for one. The two gentlemen went out immediately, and in Mr. Ward's presence Mr. Lincoln had the above picture taken.] One man was impressed by the character of the sentences he had given him for a copy. "It was considered at that time," said he, "that Abe was the best penman in the neighborhood. One day, while he was on a visit at my mother's, I asked him to write some copies for me. He very willingly consented. He wrote several of them, but one of them I have never forgotten, although a boy at that time. It was this: "'Good boys who to their books apply Will all be great men by and by.'" All of his comrades remembered his stories and his clearness in argument. "When he appeared in company," says Nat Grigsby, "the boys would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was figurative in his speech, talks, and conversation. He argued much from analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories, maxims, tales, and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or idea by some story that was plain and near us, that we might instantly see the force and bearing of what he said." There is one other testimony to his character as a boy which should not be omitted. It is that of his step-mother: