XXVI. LEONARD SWETT. MR. LINCOLN'S STORY OF HIS OWN LIFE. N the autumn of 1849, I was sitting with Judge I a David Davis in a small country hotel in Mt. Pulaski, Illinois, when a tall man, with a circular blue cloak thrown over his shoulders, entered one door of the room, and passing through without speaking, went out another. I was struck by his appearance. It was the first time I had ever seen him, and I said to Judge Davis, when he had gone, 66 Who is that?" "Why, don't you know him? That is Lincoln." In a few moments he returned, and, for the first time, I shook the hand and made the acquaintance of that man who since then has so wonderfully impressed himself upon the hearts and affections of mankind. The State of Illinois contained at that time in round numbers about 500,000 souls, and Chicago about 28,000 instead of 700,000 as now. The county seats of the State, now containing 5,000 and 20,000 as a general rule, then contained 500 to 1,000, with a log court house and a log jail. The settlements in the country skirted along the timber, the streams were without bridges, and the prairies were wholly unsettled. Dim roads or trails extended from one county seat to another, and the ordinary mode of travel was on horseback or, occasionally, in a buggy. We were then attending the circuit court, which circuit embraced fourteen counties. These courts commenced about the first of September and closed about Christmas, and commenced again about February and closed about June. The time allotted for holding court was from two to three days to a week at a place.* Mr. Lincoln had, just before that time, closed his only term in Congress, and had, when I met him, returned to his former life as a lawyer upon this, the Eighth Judicial Circuit. For eleven years thereafter we traversed this circuit together, the size of the circuit being diminished by the Legislature as the country increased in settlement; staying at the same little country hotel, riding and driving together over the country, and trying suits together, or, more frequently, opposed to each other. In the fall of 1853, as I was riding with him in a buggy from De Witt County to Champaign, a distance of about fifty miles, upon the business of attending this court, and as we were traversing a prairie some twelve or fifteen miles in width, and nearing Champaign, I said to Mr. Lincoln, "I have heard a great many curious incidents of your early *See Note, p. 468. life, and I would be obliged if you would begin at your earliest recollection and tell me the story of it continuously." The season and the surroundings seemed adapted to lazy story telling. The weather was the perfection of Indian summer time, and the tall grasses covered the prairie everywhere like ripened grain. Occasionally, a distant prairie fire filled the air with hazy smoke, the quail whistled to his mate, and, at times, the red deer started from the tall grasses of the dell as we passed along. I give this story as nearly as I can in the substance of his own language: I can remember," he said, "our life in Kentucky; the cabin, the stinted living, the sale of our possessions, and the journey with my father and mother to Southern Indiana." I think he said he was then about six years old. Shortly after his arrival in Indiana his mother died. "It was pretty pinching times," he said, "at first in Indiana, getting the cabin built, and the clearing for the crops; but presently we got reasonably comfortable, and my father married again." He had very faint recollections of his own mother, he was so young when she died, but he spoke most kindly of her and of his step-mother, and of her care for him in providing for his wants. He told me of earning his first half dollar. Standing upon the shore of a river a steamboat was passing |