We shall have occasion in a subsequent chapter to recur to this so-called book which Lincoln is alleged to have written while in New Salem. It is sufficient at this time to remember, and the fact must not be overlooked, that our knowledge of this book depends solely upon the testimony of Herndon. Herndon never saw the book, and so far as is known he never talked with anyone who had seen it. He affirms that Lincoln never denied having written a book on the subject of religion, but he nowhere claims that Lincoln told him in detail concerning its contents. Herndon's principal visit, and perhaps the only one which he made to New Salem in quest of literary material, was in October in 1866. He had attended the Circuit Court of Menard County on Saturday, October 13, and on Sunday morning at 11:20 A.M., as he tells us with painstaking and lawyer-like particularity, he visited the site of New Salem. That afternoon and a part of the next morning, which he says was misty, cloudy, foggy, and cold, he made inquiry of the oldest inhabitant of that part of the country and wrote out the substance of his lecture on Ann Rutledge. This was a whole generation after Lincoln had removed from the now depopulated New Salem, and there were very few people in the neighborhood who remembered him through any personal association. The town had completely disappeared, but Herndon found the site of the houses that once had stood there, and also found and identified the grave of Ann Rutledge. To that visit we are indebted for a good deal of our knowledge of the background of Lincoln's life during this formative epoch. But we are not bound to accept all of Mr. Herndon's inferences regarding it. It must be remembered that Herndon's lecture did not pass unchallenged. So small was the audience when he delivered it and so uniformally unfavorable were the press comments that he never repeated this lecture, and some of its statements are open to question. It is not in this lecture that we learn of the essay which Lincoln is alleged to have written in criticism of the Bible, but that was the visit on which Herndon appears to have gathered his information concerning Lincoln's more intimate relations with New Salem.