ng plates and cups and saucers and glasses. Nobody seemed to be
able to stop them. I hear that they had to pay several hundred dollars
for the damage done. You will be apt to think that there is too much
liberty here in the West, and perhaps that is so, but the fact is these
men are not half so bad as they seem to be. Lincoln tells me that they
are honest almost to a man and sincerely devoted to the public good as
they see it. I asked Abe Lincoln, who all his life has associated with
rough tongued, drinking men, how he had managed to hold his own course
and keep his talk and habits so clean.

"'Why, the fact is,' said he, 'I have associated with the people who
lived around me only part of the time, but I have never stopped
associating with myself and with Washington and Clay and Webster and
Shakespeare and Burns and DeFoe and Scott and Blackstone and Parsons. On
the whole, I've been in pretty good company.'

"He has not yet accomplished much in the Legislature. I don't think that
he will until some big issue comes along. 'I'm not much of a hand at
hunting squirrels,' he said to me the other day. 'Wait till I see a
bear.' The people of Vandalia and Springfield have never seen him yet.
They don't know him as I do. But they all respect him--just for his good
fellowship, honesty and decency. I guess that every fellow with a foul
mouth hates himself for it and envies the man who isn't like him. They
begin to see his skill as a politician, which has shown itself in the
passage of a bill removing the capitol to Springfield. Abe Lincoln was
the man who put it through. But he has not yet uncovered his best
talents. Mark my word, some day Lincoln will be a big man.

"The death of his sweetheart has aged and sobered him. When we are
together he often sits looking down with a sad face. For a while not a
word out of him. Suddenly he will begin saying things, the effect of
which will go with me to my grave, although I can not call back the words
and place them as he did. He is what I would call a great Captain of
words. Seems as if I heard the band playing while they march by me as
well dressed and stepping as proud and regular as The Boston Guards. In
some great battle between Right and Wrong you will hear from him. I hope
it may be the battle between Slavery and Freedom, although at present he
thinks they must avoid coming to a clinch. In my opinion, it can not be
done. I expect to live to see the fight and to take part in it."