of his youth; and their familiarity neither appeared unnatural to them,
nor was it in the least awkward to him. He still told and enjoyed
stories similar to those he had told and enjoyed in the Indiana
settlement and at New Salem. His wants remained as modest as they had
ever been; his domestic habits had by no means completely accommodated
themselves to those of his more highborn wife; and though the "Kentucky
jeans" apparel had long been dropped, his clothes of better material and
better make would sit ill sorted on his gigantic limbs. His cotton
umbrella, without a handle, and tied together with a coarse string to
keep it from flapping, which he carried on his circuit rides, is said to
be remembered still by some of his surviving neighbors. This rusticity
of habit was utterly free from that affected contempt of refinement and
comfort which self-made men sometimes carry into their more affluent
circumstances. To Abraham Lincoln it was entirely natural, and all those
who came into contact with him knew it to be so. In his ways of thinking
and feeling he had become a gentleman in the highest sense, but the
refining process had polished but little the outward form. The plain
people, therefore, still considered "honest Abe Lincoln" one of
themselves; and when they felt, which they no doubt frequently did, that
his thoughts and aspirations moved in a sphere above their own, they were
all the more proud of him, without any diminution of fellow-feeling. It
was this relation of mutual sympathy and understanding between Lincoln
and the plain people that gave him his peculiar power as a public man,
and singularly fitted him, as we shall see, for that leadership which was
preeminently required in the great crisis then coming on,--the leadership
which indeed thinks and moves ahead of the masses, but always remains
within sight and sympathetic touch of them.

He entered upon the campaign of 1858 better equipped than he had ever
been before. He not only instinctively felt, but he had convinced