Leaning against the wall near the window was a big, red-faced man, whom I knew as a Copperhead.  He had been drinking, evidently, for he was making boozy efforts to stand very straight.  There were only heard a subdued buzz of whispers and the monotonous voice of the reader, as he stood there in the center, his newspaper in one hand and a lighted candle in the other.

The red-faced man lurched two steps forward, and in a loud voice said, “L—­L—­Lincoln is dead—­an’ I’m damn glad of it!”

Across the room I saw two men struggling with Little Ramsey.  Why they should struggle with him I could not imagine, but ere I could think the matter out, I saw him shake himself loose from the strong hands that sought to hold him.  He sprang upon the counter, and in one hand I saw he held a scale-weight.  Just an instant he stood there, and then the weight shot straight at the red-faced man.  The missile glanced on his shoulder and shot through the window.  In another second the red-faced man plunged through the window, taking the entire sash with him.

“You’ll have to pay for that window!” called the alarmed postmaster out into the night.

The store was quickly emptied, and on following outside no trace of the red man could be found.  The earth had swallowed both the man and the five-pound scale-weight.

After some minutes had passed in a vain search for the weight and the Copperhead, we went back into the store and the reading was continued.

But the interruption had relieved the tension, and for the first time that day men in that post-office joked and laughed.  It even lifted from my heart the gloom that threatened to smother me, and I went home and told the story to my mother and sisters, and they too smiled, so closely akin are tears and smiles.

* * * * *

The story of Lincoln’s life had been ingrained into me long before I ever read a book.  For the people who knew Lincoln, and the people who knew the people that Lincoln knew, were the people I knew.  I visited at their houses and heard them tell what Lincoln had said when he sat at table where I then sat.  I listened long to Lincoln stories, and “and that reminds me” was often on the lips of those I loved.  All the tales told by the faithful Herndon and the needlessly loyal Nicolay and Hay were current coin, and the rehearsal of the Lincoln-Douglas debate was commonplace.

When our own poverty was mentioned, we compared it with the poverty that Lincoln had endured, and felt rich.  I slept in a garret where the winter’s snow used to sift merrily through the slab shingles, but then I was covered with warm buffalo-robes, and a loving mother tucked me in and on my forehead imprinted a goodnight kiss.  But Lincoln at the same age had no mother and lived in a hut that had neither windows, doors nor floor, and a pile of leaves and straw in the corner was his bed.  Our house had two rooms, but one Winter the Lincoln home was only a shed enclosed on three sides.