The following story illustrates the power of Mr. Lincoln’s memory of
names and faces. When he was a comparatively young man and a candidate
for the Illinois Legislature, he made a personal canvass of the district.
While “swinging around the circle” he stopped one day and took dinner
with a farmer in Sangamon county.
Years afterward, when Mr. Lincoln had become President, a soldier came to
call on him at the White House. At the first glance the Chief Executive
said: “Yes, I remember; you used to live on the Danville road. I took
dinner with you when I was running for the Legislature. I recollect
that we stood talking out at the barnyard gate, while I sharpened my
jackknife.”
“Y-a-a-s,” drawled the soldier; “you did. But say, wherever did you put
that whetstone? I looked for it a dozen times, but I never could find it
after the day you used it. We allowed as how mabby you took it ’long with
you.”
“No,” said Lincoln, looking serious and pushing away a lot of documents
of state from the desk in front of him. “No, I put it on top of that
gatepost--that high one.”
“Well!” exclaimed the visitor, “mabby you did. Couldn’t anybody else have
put it there, and none of us ever thought of looking there for it.”
The soldier was then on his way home, and when he got there the first
thing he did was to look for the whetstone. And sure enough, there it
was, just where Lincoln had laid it fifteen years before. The honest
fellow wrote a letter to the Chief Magistrate, telling him that the
whetstone had been found, and would never be lost again.