"'Mr. Lincoln, ever since what has just happened back there in the farmhouse, I have been thinking that it is very extraordinary that you should so perfectly have acted as pastor as well as attorney.' "When the answer to this suggestion finally was given--and it was not given at once--Lincoln said: "'God, and Eternity, and Heaven were very near to me today.'"--CHARLES T. WHITE, _Lincoln the Comforter_, pp. 11-16. Reference should be made in our review of this period to Lincoln's stories as exhibiting an important phase of his character. It is not easy to decide what stories actually were Lincoln's. Very few of them are to be found in their original setting, for he did not commonly tell stories when he made speeches. They were told in personal interviews, in hours of recreation, and especially in taverns and other loafing places. The period of their greatest vogue was that in which Lincoln traveled the circuit. Most of the successful lawyers of that day were story-tellers; and in the evenings of court-week they swapped yarns with local wits. Lincoln was the most famous of a considerable group of noted Illinois story-tellers. During his lifetime he was asked about how many of the stories attributed to him were his own, and he said he thought about half. A much larger discount would need to be made now. Many such stories Lincoln probably never heard. The stories which lawyers told to each other and to groups of men were not all of them overnice; and Lincoln's stories were like the rest. He did not always confine himself to strictly proper stories. But in those that are authentic and not quite proper, it is to be observed that the coarseness was incidental to the real point of the story. I have not heard any story, authenticated as Lincoln's, which is actually obscene. It has been my privilege to examine a considerable quantity of unpublished writing of Lincoln's, including some manuscripts that have been withheld for the reason that they were not quite proper. Of these I can say that they are few in number, and that the element of vulgarity is very small. Excepting only the "First Chronicles of Reuben," which was a rude backwoods joke, written in his boyhood, and in full accord with the standards of humor current in the time and general environment, there is not very much that one could wish had been destroyed.