Lincoln was a marked and peculiar young man. People talked about him.
His studious habits, his greed for information, his thorough mastery
of the difficulties of every new position in which he was placed,
his intelligence on all matters of public concern, his unwearying
good-nature, his skill in telling a story, his great athletic power,
his quaint, odd ways, his uncouth appearance--all tended to bring him in
sharp contrast with the dull mediocrity by which he was surrounded.
Denton Offutt, his old employer, said, after having had a conversation
with Lincoln, that the young man “had talent enough in him to make a
President.”