dollars a month, and had only one pair of breeches to my name, and they were buckskin,—­and if you know the nature of buckskin, when wet and dried by the sun it will shrink,—­and mine kept shrinking until they left several inches of my legs bare between the tops of my socks and the lower part of my breeches.  Whilst I was growing taller, they were becoming shorter and so much tighter that they left a blue streak around my legs that can be seen to this day.  If you call this aristocracy, I plead guilty to the charge.’”

“The Saturday evening preceding the election,” says Mr. Lamon, “the candidates were addressing the people in the Court House at Springfield.  Dr. Early, one of the candidates on the Democratic side, made some charge which Mr. N.W.  Edwards, one of the candidates on the Whig side, deemed untrue.  Edwards climbed on a table, so as to be seen by Early and by everyone in the house, and at the top of his voice told Early that the charge was false.  The excitement that followed was intense—­so much so that fighting men thought a duel must settle the difficulty.  Lincoln, by the programme, followed Early.  He took up the subject in dispute and handled it fairly and with such ability that everyone was astonished and pleased.  So that difficulty ended there.  Then for the first time, aroused by the excitement of the occasion, he spoke in that tenor intonation of voice that ultimately settled down into that clear, shrill monotone style that afterwards characterized his public speaking, and enabled his audience, however large, to hear distinctly the lowest sound of his voice.”  Mr. Arnold says that Lincoln’s reply to Dr. Early was “often spoken of as exhibiting wonderful ability, and a crushing power of sarcasm and ridicule.  When he began he was embarrassed, spoke slowly and with some hesitation and difficulty.  But becoming excited by his subject, he forgot himself entirely, and went on with argument and wit, anecdote and ridicule, until his opponent was completely crushed.  Old settlers of Sangamon County who heard this reply speak of his personal transformation as wonderful.  When Lincoln began, they say, he seemed awkward, homely, unprepossessing.  As he went on, and became excited, his figure rose to its full height and became commanding and majestic.  His plain face was illuminated and glowed with expression.  His dreamy eye flashed with inspiration, and his whole person, his voice, his gestures, were full of the magnetism of powerful feeling, of conscious strength and true eloquence.”

The inflexible honesty and fine sense of honor which lay at the foundation of Lincoln’s character are nobly exhibited in the following letter to a former friend but now political opponent, Col.  Robert Allen: