book was Webster's Speller. "When I got him
through that," said Uncle Dennis, "I had only a copy of the Indiana
Statutes. Then Abe got hold of a book. I can't rikkilect the name. It
told a yarn about a feller, a nigger or suthin', that sailed a flatboat
up to a rock, and the rock was magnetized and drawed all the nails out,
and he got a duckin' or drowned or suthin',--I forget now. [It was the
"Arabian Nights."] Abe would lay on the floor with a chair under his
head and laugh over them stories by the hour. I told him they was likely
lies from beginnin' to end, but he learned to read right well in them. I
borrowed for him the Life of Washington and the Speeches of Henry Clay.
They had a powerful influence on him. He told me afterwards in the White
House he wanted to live like Washington. His speeches show it, too. But
the other book did the most amazin' work. Abe was a Democrat, like his
father and all of us, when he began to read it. When he closed it he was
a Whig, heart and soul, and he went on step by step till he became
leader of the Republicans."

These reminiscences of Dennis Hanks give the clearest and undoubtedly
the most accurate glimpse of Lincoln's youth. He says further, referring
to the boy's unusual physical strength: "My, how he would chop! His axe
would flash and bite into a sugar-tree or sycamore, and down it would
come. If you heard him fellin' trees in a clearin' you would say there
was three men at work, the way the trees fell. Abe was never sassy or
quarrelsome. I've seen him walk into a crowd of sawin' rowdies and tell
some droll yarn and bust them all up. It was the same after he got to be
a lawyer. All eyes was on him whenever he riz. There was _suthin'
peculiarsome_ about him. I moved from Indiana to Illinois when Abe did.
I bought a little improvement near him, six miles from Decatur. Here the
famous rails were split that were carried round in the campaign. They
were called _his_ rails, but you never can tell. I split some of 'em. He
was a master hand at maulin' rails. I heard him say in a speech once,
'If I didn't make these I made many just as good.' Then the crowd
yelled."

One of his playmates has furnished much that is of interest in regard to
the reputation which Lincoln left behind him in the neighborhood where
he passed his boyhood and much of his youth. This witness says:
"Whenever the court was in session he was a frequent attendant. John A.
Breckenridge was the foremost lawyer in t