also. He has furnished some recollections of the President's boyhood
which are well worth recording. "Uncle Dennis," as he was familiarly
called, was himself a striking character, a man of original manners and
racy conversation. A sketch of him as he appeared to an observer in his
later days is thus given: "Uncle Dennis is a typical Kentuckian, born in
Hardin County in 1799. His face is sun-bronzed and ploughed with the
furrows of time, but he has a resolute mouth, a firm grip of the jaws,
and a broad forehead above a pair of piercing eyes. The eyes seem out of
place in the weary, faded face, but they glow and flash like two diamond
sparks set in ridges of dull gold. The face is a serious one, but the
play of light in the eyes, unquenchable by time, betrays a nature of
sunshine and elate with life. A glance at the profile shows a face
strikingly Lincoln-like,--prominent cheek bones, temple, nose, and chin;
but best of all is that twinkling drollery in the eye that flashed in
the White House during the dark days of the Civil War."

Uncle Dennis's recollections go back to the birth of Abraham Lincoln. To
use his own words: "I rikkilect I run all the way, over two miles, to
see Nancy Hanks's boy baby. Her name was Nancy Hanks before she married
Thomas Lincoln. 'Twas common for connections to gather in them days to
see new babies. I held the wee one a minute. I was ten years old, and it
tickled me to hold the pulpy, red little Lincoln. The family moved to
Indiana," he went on, "when Abe was about nine. Mr. Lincoln moved first,
and built a camp of brush in Spencer County. We came a year later, and
he had then a cabin. So he gave us the shanty. Abe killed a turkey the
day we got there, and couldn't get through tellin' about it. The name
was pronounced Linkhorn by the folks then. We was all uneducated. After
a spell we learnt better. I was the only boy in the place all them
years, and Abe and me was always together."