as the Bloomington stage came in at sundown, the bench and bar, jurors and citizens, would gather in crowds at the hotel where he always put up, to give him a welcome if, happily, he should arrive, and to experience the keenest feelings of disappointment if he should not.  If he arrived, as he alighted and stretched out both his long arms to shake hands with those nearest to him and with those who approached, his homely face handsome in its broad and sunshiny smile, his voice touching in its kindly and cheerful accents, everyone in his presence felt lighter in heart and more joyous.  He brought light with him.  He loved his fellow-men with all the strength of his great nature, and those who came in contact with him could not help reciprocating the love.”

Another old friend describes Lincoln as being at this time “very plain in his costume, as well as rather uncourtly in his address and general appearance.  His clothing was of home Kentucky jean, and the first impression made by his tall, lank figure upon those who saw him was not specially prepossessing.  He had not outgrown his hard backwoods experience, and showed no inclination to disguise or to cast behind him the honest and manly though unpolished characteristics of his earlier days.  Never was a man further removed from all snobbish affectation.  As little was there, also, of the demagogue art of assuming an uncouthness or rusticity of manner and outward habit with the mistaken notion of thus securing particular favor as ‘one of the masses.’  He chose to appear then, as in all his later life, precisely what he was.  His deportment was unassuming, though without any awkwardness of reserve.”

Mr. Crane, an old settler of Tazewell County, says he used to see Lincoln when passing through Washington, in that county, on his way to attend court at Metamora; and he remembers him as “dressed in a homespun coat that came below his knees and was out at both elbows.”

Lincoln’s tenderness of heart was displayed in his treatment of animals, toward which he was often performing unusual acts of kindness.  On one occasion, as Mr. Speed relates, Lincoln and the other members of the Springfield bar had been attending court at Christiansburg, and Mr. Speed was riding with them toward Springfield.  There was quite a party of these lawyers, riding two by two along a country lane.  Lincoln and John J. Hardin brought up the rear of the cavalcade.  “We had passed through a thicket of wild plum and crab-apple trees,” says Mr. Speed, “and stopped to water our horses.  Hardin came up alone.  ’Where is Lincoln?’ we inquired.  ‘Oh,’ replied he, ’when I saw him last he had caught two young birds which the wind had blown out of their nests, and he was hunting the nest to put them back.’  In a short time Lincoln came up, having found the nest and placed the young birds in it.  The party laughed at him; but he said, ’I could not have slept if I had not restored those little birds to their mother.’”