The Lincoln Story Book

The Abraham Lincoln Statue at Chicago is accepted as the typical Westerner of the forum, the rostrum, and the tribune, as he stood to be inaugurated under the war-cloud in 1861. But there is another Lincoln as dear to the common people--the Lincoln of happy quotations, the speaker of household words. Instead of the erect, impressive, penetrative platform orator we see a long, gaunt figure, divided between two chairs for comfort, the head bent forward, smiling broadly, the lips curved in laughter, the deep eyes irradiating their caves of wisdom; the story-telling Lincoln, enjoying the enjoyment he gave to others.

This talkativeness, as Lincoln himself realized, was a very valuable asset. Leaving home, he found, in a venture at "Yankee notion-pedling," that glibness meant three hundred per cent, in disposing of flimsy wares. In the camp of the lumber-jacks and of the Indian rangers he was regarded as the pride of the mess and the inspirator of the tent. From these stages he rose to be a graduate of the "college" of the yarn-spinner--the village store, where he became clerk.

The store we know is the township vortex where all assemble to "swap stories" and deal out the news. Lincoln, from behind the counter--his pulpit--not merely repeated items of information which he had heard, but also recited doggerel satire of his own concoction, punning and emitting sparks of wit. Lincoln was hailed as the "capper" of any "good things on the rounds."

Even then his friends saw the germs of the statesman in the lank, homely, crack-voiced hobbledehoy. Their praise emboldened him to stand forward as the spokesman at schoolhouse meetings, lectures, log-rollings, huskings auctions, fairs, and so on--the folk-meets of our people. One watching him in 1830 said foresightedly: "Lincoln has touched land at last."

In commencing electioneering, he cultivated the farming population and their ways and diction. He learned by their parlance and Bible phrases to construct "short sentences of small words," but he had all along the idea that "the plain people are more easily influenced by a broad and humorous illustration than in any other way." It is the Anglo-Saxon trait, distinguishing all great preachers, actors, and authors of that breed.

He acknowledged his personal defects with a frankness unique and startling; told a girl whom he was courting that he did not believe any woman could fancy him; publicly said that he could not be in looks what was rated a gentleman; carried the knife of "the homeliest man"; disparaged himself like a Brutus or a Pope Sixtus. But the mass relished this "plain, blunt man who spoke right on."

He talked himself into being the local "Eminence," but did not succeed in winning the election when first presented as "the humble" candidate for the State Senate. He stood upon his "imperfect education," his not belonging "to the first families, but the seconds"; and his shunning society as debarring him from the study he required.

Repulsed at the polls, he turned to the law as another channel, supplementing forensic failings by his artful story-telling. Judges would suspend business till "that Lincoln fellow got through with his yarn-spinning" or underhandedly would direct the usher to get the rich bit Lincoln told, and repeat it at the recess.

Mrs. Lincoln, the first to weigh this man justly, said proudly, that "Lincoln was the great favorite everywhere."