"I first met Dr. Smith in the summer of 1850 in Jacksonville, at the commencement exercises of Illinois College, from which I had graduated and had just been appointed a member of the faculty of instruction. The acquaintance then formed ripened into mutual and congenial friendship. And during the two years of my connection with the college I was frequently a visitor and guest at his house in Springfield, and when, by reason of removal to another institution in another State, the visits were fewer and farther between, 'a free epistolary correspondence' continued to strengthen and brighten the links of fellowship. With his other accomplishments, Dr. Smith was an interesting and instructive conversationalist--in fact, quite a raconteur, somewhat like his friend Lincoln, always ready with a story to illustrate his opinions, and which gave piquancy to his conversation. Whenever he had occasion to speak of Lincoln he always evinced the strongest attachment and the warmest friendship for him, which was known to be fully reciprocated. Democrat as he was, and tinged with Southern hues--though never a secessionist--there seemed to be a mystic cord uniting the minister and the lawyer. This was subsequently beautifully shown on the part of Mr. Lincoln, who never forgot to do a generous thing. When he was elected President Dr. Smith and wife were getting old, their children all married and gone, except their youngest[42] son, a young man of twenty-three or four years of age. One of Lincoln's first official acts, after his inauguration, was the appointment of this young man to the consulate at Dundee, Scotland. The doctor, with his wife and son, returned to the land of his birth. The son soon returned to America, and Dr. Smith himself was appointed consul, which position he retained until his death in 1871. "In the spring of 1857 Dr. Smith, anticipating a necessary absence from his church of two or three months during the summer, invited me to supply his pulpit until his return. Being young and inexperienced in the ministry, with considerable hesitation I accepted his urgent invitation. So I spent my college vacation performing as best I could this service. Mr. Lincoln was a regular attendant at church and evidently an attentive hearer and devout worshiper. "As a college student I had seen and heard him and looked up to him as a being towering above common men; and, I confess, I was not a little intimidated by his presence as he sat at the end of a seat well forward toward the pulpit, with his deep eyes fixed upon me, and his long legs stretched out in the middle aisle to keep them from [using one of his own colloquialisms] being scrouged in the narrow space between the pews. My 'stage fright,' however, was soon very much relieved by his kindliness and words of encouragement.