“He was proverbially careless as to his habits,” Herndon writes.  “In a letter to a fellow lawyer in another town, apologizing for his failure to answer sooner, he explains:  ’First, I have been very busy in the United States Court; second, when I received the letter, I put it in my old hat, and buying a new one the next day, the old one was set aside, so the letter was lost sight of for the time.’  This hat of Lincoln’s—­a silk plug—­was an extraordinary receptacle.  It was his desk and his memorandum book.  In it he carried his bank-book and the bulk of his letters.  Whenever in his reading or researches, he wished to preserve an idea, he jotted it down on an envelope or stray piece of paper and placed it inside the lining; afterwards, when the memorandum was needed, there was only one place to look for it.”  Herndon makes no bones about confessing that their office was very dirty.  So neglected was it that a young man of neat habits who entered the office as a law student under Lincoln could not refrain from cleaning it up, and the next visitor exclaimed in astonishment, “What’s happened here!"(3)

“The office,” says that same law student, “was on the second floor of a brick building on the public square opposite the courthouse.  You went up a flight of stairs and then passed along a hallway to the rear office which was a medium sized room.  There was one long table in the center of the room, and a shorter one running in the opposite direction forming a T and both were covered with green baize.  There were two windows which looked into the back yard.  In one corner was an old-fashioned secretary with pigeonholes and a drawer; and here Mr. Lincoln and his partner kept their law papers.  There was also a bookcase containing about two hundred volumes of law and miscellaneous books.”  The same authority adds, “There was no order in the office at all.”  Lincoln left all the money matters to Herndon.  “He never entered an item on the account book.  If a fee was paid to him and Herndon was not there, he would divide the money, wrap up one part in paper and place it in his partner’s desk with the inscription, ‘Case of Roe versus Doe, Herndon’s half.’  He had an odd habit of reading aloud much to his partner’s annoyance.  He talked incessantly; a whole forenoon would sometimes go by while Lincoln occupied the whole time telling stories."(4)

On the circuit, his story-telling was an institution.  Two other men, long since forgotten, vied with him as rival artists in humorous narrative.  These three used to hold veritable tournaments.  Herndon has seen “the little country tavern where these three were wont to meet after an adjournment of court, crowded almost to suffocation, with an audience of men who had gathered to witness the contest among the members of the strange triumvirate.  The physicians of the town, all the lawyers, and not infrequently a preacher, could be found in the crowd that filled the doors and windows.  The yarns they spun and