Lincoln scratched his head thoughtfully and asked: 

“Billy, hadn’t we better withdraw that plea?  You know it’s a sham and generally that’s another name for a lie.  Don’t let it go on record.  The cursed thing may come staring us in the face long after this suit has been forgotten.”

On the whole he was not so communicative as he had been in his young manhood.  He suffered days of depression when he said little.  Often, in good company, be seemed to be thinking of things in no way connected with the talk.  Many called him a rather “shut-mouthed man.”

Herndon used to say that the only thing he had against Lincoln was his habit of coming in mornings and sprawling on the lounge and reading aloud from the newspaper.

The people of the town loved him.  One day as we were walking along the street together we came upon a girl dressed up and crying in front of her father’s door.

“What’s the matter?” Lincoln asked.

“I want to take the train and the wagon hasn’t come for my trunk,” said she.

Lincoln went in and got the trunk and carried it to the station on his back, with people laughing and throwing jokes at him as he strode along.  When I think of him his chivalry and kindness come first to mind.

He read much, but his days of book study were nearly ended.  His learning was now got mostly in the school of experience.  Herndon says, and I think it is true, that he never read to the end of a law book those days.  The study of authorities was left to the junior partner.  His reading was mostly outside the law.  His knowledge of science was derived from Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

He was still afraid of the Abolition Movement in 1852 and left town to avoid a convention of its adherents.  He thought the effort to resist by force the laws of Kansas was criminal and would hurt the cause of freedom.  “Let us have peace and revolutionize through the ballot-box,” he urged.

In 1854 a little quarrel in New York began to weave the thread of destiny.  Seward, Weed and Greeley had wielded decisive power in the party councils of that state.  Seward was a high headed, popular idol.  His plans and his triumphant progress absorbed his thought.  Weed was dazzled by the splendor of this great star.  Neither gave a thought to their able colleague—­a poor man struggling to build up a great newspaper.  An office, with fair pay, would have been a help to him those days.  But he got no recognition of his needs and talents and services.  Suddenly he wrote a letter to Weed in which he said: 

  “The firm of Seward, Weed and Greeley is hereby dissolved by the
  resignation of its junior member.”

When Greeley had grown in power and wisdom until his name was known and honored from ocean to ocean, they tried to make peace with him, but in vain.