THE STORY OF YOUNG
ABRAHAM LINCOLN only because they wished their recollections to benefit
the rising generation.

Several of these modest folk have shed true light on important phases
and events in Lincoln's life history. For instance, there has been much
discussion concerning Lincoln's Gettysburg Address--where was it
written, and did he deliver it from notes?

Now, fifty years after that great occasion, comes a distinguished
college professor who unconsciously settles the whole dispute, whether
Lincoln held his notes in his right hand or his left--if he used them at
all!--while making his immortal "little speech." To a group of veterans
of the Grand Army of the Republic he related, casually, what he saw
while a college student at Gettysburg, after working his way through the
crowd of fifteen thousand people to the front of the platform on that
memorable day. From this point of vantage he saw and heard everything,
and there is no gainsaying the vivid memories of his first
impressions--how the President held the little pages in both hands
straight down before him, swinging his tall form to right, to left and
to the front again as he emphasized the now familiar closing words,
"_of_ the people--_by_ the people--_for_ the people--shall not perish
from the earth."

Such data have been gathered from various sources and are here given for
the first time in a connected life-story. Several corrections of stories
giving rise to popular misconceptions have been supplied by Robert,
Lincoln's only living son. One of these is the true version of "Bob's"
losing the only copy of his father's first inaugural address. Others
were furnished by two aged Illinois friends who were acquainted with
"Abe" before he became famous. One of these explained, without knowing
it, a question which has puzzled several biographers--how a young man of
Lincoln's shrewd intelligence could have been guilty of such a
misdemeanor, as captain in the Black Hawk War, as to make it necessary
for his superior officer to deprive him of his sword for a single day.

A new story is told by a dear old lady, who did not wish her name
given, about herself when she was a little girl, when a "drove of
lawyers riding the old Eighth Judicial District of Illinois," came to
drink from a famous cold spring on her father's premises. She described
the uncouth dress of a tall young man, asking her father who he was, and
he replied with a laugh, "Oh, that's Abe Lincoln."

On