little essays of his own. First he sketched these with charcoal on a
wooden shovel scraped white with a drawing-knife, or on basswood
shingles. Then he transferred them to paper, which was a scarce
commodity in the Lincoln household; taking care to cut his expressions
close, so that they might not cover too much space,--a style-forming
method greatly to be commended. Seeing boys put a burning coal on the
back of a wood turtle, he was moved to write on cruelty to animals.
Seeing men intoxicated with whiskey, he wrote on temperance. In
verse-making, too, he tried himself, and in satire on persons offensive
to him or others,--satire the rustic wit of which was not always fit for
ears polite. Also political thoughts he put upon paper, and some of his
pieces were even deemed good enough for publication in the county weekly.

Thus he won a neighborhood reputation as a clever young man, which he
increased by his performances as a speaker, not seldom drawing upon
himself the dissatisfaction of his employers by mounting a stump in the
field, and keeping the farm hands from their work by little speeches in a
jocose and sometimes also a serious vein. At the rude social frolics of
the settlement he became an important person, telling funny, stories,
mimicking the itinerant preachers who had happened to pass by, and making
his mark at wrestling matches, too; for at the age of seventeen he had
attained his full height, six feet four inches in his stockings, if he
had any, and a terribly muscular clodhopper he was. But he was known
never to use his extraordinary strength to the injury or humiliation of
others; rather to do them a kindly turn, or to enforce justice and fair
dealing between them. All this made him a favorite in backwoods society,
although in some things he appeared a little odd, to his friends. Far
more than any of them, he was given not only to reading, but to fits of
abstraction, to quiet musing with himself, and also to strange spells of
melancholy, from which he often would pass in a moment to rollicking