n a promise sufficed; credit was a system well understood, and
promissory notes constituted an unquestioned and popular method of
payment that would have made a millennium for Mr. Micawber. But however
scant might be cash and houses, each town had its grocery, and these
famous "stores" were by far the chief influence in shaping the ideas of
the Westerner. There all congregated, the idlers all day long, the busy
men in the evening; and there, stimulated by the whiskey of the
proprietor, they gossiped about everybody's affairs, talked about
business and the prospects of the neighborhood, and argued about the
politics of the county, the State, and even of the nation. Jokes and
stories, often most uncouth and gross, whiled away the time. It was in
these groceries, and in the rough crucible of such talk, wherein
grotesque imagery and extravagant phrases were used to ridicule
pretension and to bring every man to his place, sometimes also to escape
taking a hard fact too hardly, that what we now call "American humor,"
with its peculiar native flavor, was born. To this it is matter of
tradition that Lincoln contributed liberally. He liked neighborly chat
and discussion; and his fondness for political debate, and his gifts in
tale and jest, made him the most popular man in every "store" that he
entered. It is commonly believed that the effect of this familiarity
with coarse talk did not afterward disappear, so that he never became
fastidious in language or in story. But apologists of this habit are
doubtless correct in saying that vulgarity in itself had no attraction
for him; it simply did not repel him, when with it there was a flavor of
humor or a useful point. Apparently it simply meant nothing to him; a
mental attitude which is not difficult of comprehension in view of its
origin.[31]

Some of the most picturesque and amusing pages of Ford's "History of
Illinois" describe the condition of the bench and bar of these
times.[32] "Boys, come in, our John is going to hold court," proclaimed
the sheriff; and the "boys" loitered into the barroom of the tavern, or
into a log cabin where the judge sat on the bed and thus, really from
the woolsack, administered "law" mixed with equity as best he knew it.
Usually these magistrates were prudent in guiding the course of
practical justice, and rarely summed up the facts lest they should make
dangerous enemies, especially in criminal cases; they often refused to
state the law, and general