s still in
Gentryville.]

[Illustration: PIGEON CREEK CHURCH.

From a photograph loaned by W.W. Admire of Chicago. This little log
church or "meetin' house" is where the Lincolns attended services in
Indiana. The pulpit is said to have been made by Thomas Lincoln. The
building was razed about fifteen years ago, after having been used for
several years as a tobacco barn.]

These are impressions of Mr. Lincoln gathered in Indiana thirty years
ago, when his companions were alive. To-day there are people living in
Spencer County who were small boys when he was a large one, and who
preserve curiously interesting impressions of him. A representative of
MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE who has recently gone in detail over the ground of
Lincoln's early life, says: "The people who live in Spencer County are
interested in any one who is interested in Abraham Lincoln." They
showed her the flooring he whip-sawed, the mantles, doors, and
window-casings he helped make, the rails he split, the cabinets he and
his father made, and scores of relics cut from planks and rails he
handled. They told what they remembered of his rhymes and how he would
walk miles to hear a speech or sermon, and, returning, would repeat
the whole in "putty good imitation." Many remembered his coming
evenings to sit around the fireplace with their older brothers and
sisters, and the stories he told and the pranks he played there until
ordered home by the elders of the household.

Captain John Lamar who was a very small boy in one of the families
where Lincoln was well known, has many interesting reminiscences which
he is fond of repeating. "He told me of riding to mill with his father
one very hot day. As they drove along the hot road they saw a boy
sitting on the top rail of an old-fashioned stake-and-rider worm
fence. When they came close they saw that the boy was reading, and had
not noticed their approach. His father, turning to him, said: 'John,
look at that boy yonder, and mark my words, he will make a smart man
out of himself. I may not see it, but you'll see if my words don't
come true.' The boy was Abraham Lincoln."

Captain Lamar tells many good stories about the early days: "Uncle
Jimmy Larkins, as everybody called him, was a great hero in my
childish eyes. Why, I cannot now say, without it was his manners.
There had been a big fox chase, and Uncle Jimmy was telling about it.
Of course he was the hero. I was only a little shaver, and I stood in
front of Unc