Lincoln’s old friend W.G.  Greene relates that while he was a student at the Illinois College at Jacksonville he became acquainted with Richard Yates, then also a student.  One summer while Yates was his guest during the vacation, Greene took him up to Salem and made him acquainted with Lincoln.  They found the latter flat on his back on a cellar door reading a newspaper.  Greene introduced the two, and thus began the acquaintance between the future War-Governor of Illinois and the future President.

Lincoln was from boyhood an adept at expedients for avoiding any unpleasant predicament, and one of his modes of getting rid of troublesome friends, as well as troublesome enemies, was by telling a story.  He began these tactics early in life, and he grew to be wonderfully adept in them.  If a man broached a subject which he did not wish to discuss, he told a story which changed the direction of the conversation.  If he was called upon to answer a question, he answered it by telling a story.  He had a story for everything; something had occurred at some place where he used to live that illustrated every possible phase of every possible subject with which he might have connection.  He acquired the habit of story-telling naturally, as we learn from the following statement:  “At home, with his step-mother and the children, he was the most agreeable fellow in the world.  He was always ready to do everything for everybody.  When he was not doing some special act of kindness, he told stories or ‘cracked jokes.’  He was as full of his yarns in Indiana as ever he was in Illinois.  Dennis Hanks was a clever hand at the same business, and so was old Tom Lincoln.”  It was while Lincoln was salesman for Offutt that he acquired the sobriquet of “Honest Abe.”  Says Mr. Arnold:  “Of many incidents illustrating his integrity, one or two may be mentioned.  One evening he found his cash overran a little, and he discovered that in making change for his last customer, an old woman who had come in a little before sundown, he had made a mistake, not having given her quite enough.  Although the amount was small, a few cents, he took the money, immediately walked to her house, and corrected the error.  At another time, on his arrival at the store in the morning, he found on the scales a weight which he remembered having used just before closing, but which was not the one he had intended to use.  He had sold a parcel of tea, and in the hurry had placed the wrong weight on the scales, so that the purchaser had a few ounces less of tea than had been paid for.  He immediately sent the quantity required to make up the deficiency.  These and many similar incidents are told regarding his scrupulous honesty in the most trifling matters.  It was for such things as these that people gave him the name which clung to him as long as he lived.”