shovel, everything
in his vicinity which could receive a legible mark, was covered with
his figures and letters. He was studying expression quite as
intelligently as he was searching for thought. Years afterwards, when
asked how he had attained such extraordinary clearness of style, he
recalled his early habit of retaining in his memory words or phrases
overheard in ordinary conversation or met in books and newspapers,
until night, meditating on them until he got at their meaning, and
then translating them into his own simpler speech. This habit, kept up
for years, was the best possible training for the writing of such
English as one finds in the Bible and in "The Pilgrim's Progress." His
self-education in the art of expression soon bore fruit in a local
reputation both as a talker and a writer. His facility in rhyme and
essay-writing was not only greatly admired by his fellows, but
awakened great astonishment, because these arts were not taught in the
neighboring schools.

In speech too he was already disclosing that command of the primary
and universal elements of interest in human intercourse which was to
make him, later, one of the most entertaining men of his time. His
power of analyzing a subject so as to be able to present it to others
with complete clearness was already disclosing itself. No matter how
complex a question might be, he did not rest until he had reduced it
to its simplest terms. When he had done this he was not only eager to
make it clear to others, but to give his presentation freshness,
variety, attractiveness. He had, in a word, the literary sense. "When
he appeared in company," writes one of his early companions, "the boys
would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was
figurative in his speech, talks and conversation. He argued much from
analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories,
maxims, tales and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or
idea by some story that was plain and near to us, that we might
instantly see the force and bearing of what he said."

In that phrase lies the secret of the closeness of Mr. Lincoln's words
to his theme and to his listeners,--one of the qualities of genuine,
original expression. He fed himself with thought, and he trained
himself in expression; but his supreme interest was in the men and
women about him, and later, in the great questions which agitated
them. He was in his early manhood when society w