But, after all, Mr. Lincoln had no friend more intimate than Jack Armstrong, and none that valued him more highly. Until he finally left New Salem for Springfield, he "rusticated" occasionally at Jack's hospitable cabin, situated "four miles in the country," as the polished metropolitans of New Salem would say. Jack's wife, Hannah, before alluded to, liked Abe, and enjoyed his visits not less than Jack did. "Abe would come out to our house," she says, "drink milk, eat mush, corn-bread, and butter, bring the children candy, and rock the cradle while I got him something to eat.... I foxed his pants; made his shirts... He has gone with us to father's; he would tell stories, joke people, girls and boys, at parties. He would nurse babies,--do any thing to accommodate anybody.... I had no books about my house; loaned him none. We didn't think about books and papers. We worked; had to live. Lincoln has staid at our house two or three weeks at a time." If Jack had "to work to live," as his wife has it, he was likewise constrained to fight and wrestle and tumble about with his unhappy fellow-citizens, in order to enjoy the life he earned by labor. He frequently came "to town," where his sportive inclinations ran riot, except as they were checked and regulated by the amicable interposition of Abe,--the prince of his affections, and the only man who was competent to restrain him. "The children at school had made a wide sliding walk," from the top of Salem Hill to the river-bank, down which they rode on sleds and boards,--a distance of two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards. Now, it was one of the suggestions of Jack's passion for innocent diversion to nail up in hogsheads such of the population as incurred his displeasure, and send them adrift along this frightful descent. Sol. Spears and one Scanlon were treated to an adventure of this kind; but the hogshead in which the two were caged "leaped over an embankment, and came near killing Scanlon." After that the sport was considered less amusing, and was very much discouraged by that portion of the community who feared, that, in the absence of more convenient victims, "the boys" might light on them. Under these circumstances, Jack, for once in his life, thought it best to abandon coercion, and negotiate for subjects. He selected an elderly person of bibulous proclivities, and tempted him with a great temptation. "Old man Jordan _agreed_ to be rolled down the hill for a gallon of whiskey;" but Lincoln, fully impressed with the brutality of the pastime, and the danger to the old sot, "stopped it." Whether he did it by persuasion or force, we know not, but probably by a judicious employment of both.