Mr. Lincoln was never a profound historical student: if he happened to need historical facts for the purposes of a political or legal discussion, he read them on the spur of the occasion. For this reason his opinions of current affairs all through his life were based more upon individual observation and reflection than upon scientific deductions from the experience of the world. Yet at this time, when he probably felt more keenly than ever after the want of a little learning to embellish the letters and speeches he was ambitious to compose, he is said to have read Rollin's "Ancient History," Gibbon's "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," and similar works, with great diligence and care. The books were borrowed from William Green, Bowlin Greene, and other parties in and about New Salem. But he greatly preferred literature of another sort, such as Mrs. Lee Hentz's novels; some of which he found among the effects of Mr. Ellis, at the time his companion and occasional bedfellow. "He was very fond," Mr. Ellis declares, "of short stories, one and two columns long,--like 'Cousin Sally Dillard,' 'Becky Wilson's Courtship,' The Down-easter and the Bull,' 'How a bashful man became a married man, with five little bashful boys, and how he and his red-headed wife became Millerites, and before they were to ascend agreed to make a clean breast of it to each other;' and how, when the old lady was through, the Down-easter earnestly wished that Gabriel might blow his horn without delay." One New Salemite insists that Mr. Lincoln told this latter story "with embezzlements" (embellishments), and therefore he is firmly convinced that Mr. Lincoln "had a hand" in originating it. The catalogue of literature in which he particularly delighted at New Salem is completed by the statement of Mr. Rutledge, that he took great pleasure in "Jack Downing's Letters." Mr. Lincoln still relished a popular song with a broad "point" or a palpable moral in it as much as he had ever enjoyed the vocal efforts of Dennis Hanks and his rollicking compeers of the Gentryville grocery. He even continued his own unhappy attempts, although with as little success as before, and quite as much to the amusement of his friends. To the choice collection of miscellaneous ballads acquired in Indiana, he now added several new favorites, like "Old Sukey Blue Skin," and some selections from the "Missouri Harmony," with variations by himself. He was also singularly fond of an Irish song, "which tells how St. Patrick came to be born on the 17th day of March."