The outpouring of Lincolnian eulogy which will greet the country in February will probably be all of a sort—indiscriminate praise—each orator and speaker straining and struggling to carry the high water mark of laudation higher than it has ever yet gone. _Let us study Mr. Lincoln with an earnest desire to find out what he was._ Let it be remembered that the biography of him written by his law partner, Mr. Herndon, was that biography in which the best picture of him might have been expected. His law partner was his friend, personally and politically. It was that law partner who converted him to abolitionism. To the task of writing the biography of the deceased member of the firm, Mr. Herndon brought devotion to the memory of a man whom he had respected and loved; yet, being honest, he told the truth about Mr. Lincoln,—painting his portrait with the warts on. _The fact that this record, written by a sorrowing friend, was destroyed_, and a spurious, after-thought Herndon biography put in its place, must always be a fact worthy of serious consideration. I can imagine one of the reasons for the suppression of Herndon’s original manuscript when I note, with amusement, the vigor and indignation with which a later biographer defends Mr. Lincoln from the terrible accusation of “sitting around and telling anecdotes to amuse a crowd.” Those who take the least pains to ascertain the facts as to Mr. Lincoln’s story telling habits soon convince themselves that nothing said upon the subject could well be an exaggeration. In his day, the broadest, vulgarest anecdotes were current in the South and West, and thousands of public men, who ought to have been ashamed of themselves for doing so, made a practice of repeating these stories to juries in the court house, to crowds on the hustings, and to groups in the streets, stores and hotels. Upon one occasion, while I was in conversation with Thomas H. Tibbles, a surviving personal acquaintance of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, I interrogated him eagerly as to both. Directing his attention to this matter of Mr. Lincoln’s alleged fondness for the relation of smutty stories, Mr. Tibbles very promptly replied that the very first time he ever saw Mr. Lincoln he was directed to his room in the hotel by a series of bursts of loud laughter. Mr. Tibbles’ curiosity was aroused by the continuous hilarity which resounded from this particular room and he went to it. There he found a great, long, raw-boned man seated in a chair with his big feet up on the table, telling smutty yarns to a circle of men who were exploding with laughter at the end of each story.