asset. Leaving home, he found, in a venture at "Yankee notion-pedling,"
that glibness meant three hundred per cent, in disposing of flimsy
wares. In the camp of the lumber-jacks and of the Indian rangers he
was regarded as the pride of the mess and the inspirator of the tent.
From these stages he rose to be a graduate of the "college" of the
yarn-spinner--the village store, where he became clerk.

The store we know is the township vortex where all assemble to "swap
stories" and deal out the news. Lincoln, from behind the counter--his
pulpit--not merely repeated items of information which he had heard,
but also recited doggerel satire of his own concoction, punning and
emitting sparks of wit. Lincoln was hailed as the "capper" of any
"good things on the rounds."

Even then his friends saw the germs of the statesman in the lank,
homely, crack-voiced hobbledehoy. Their praise emboldened him to
stand forward as the spokesman at schoolhouse meetings, lectures,
log-rollings, huskings auctions, fairs, and so on--the folk-meets of
our people. One watching him in 1830 said foresightedly: "Lincoln
has touched land at last."

In commencing electioneering, he cultivated the farming population and
their ways and diction. He learned by their parlance and Bible phrases
to construct "short sentences of small words," but he had all along
the idea that "the plain people are more easily influenced by a broad
and humorous illustration than in any other way." It is the Anglo-Saxon
trait, distinguishing all great preachers, actors, and authors of that
breed.

He acknowledged his personal defects with a frankness unique and