[From the same]
Among the interesting and in a way shaping incidents of my boyhood,
was a brief contact with Abraham Lincoln about 1856. He was coming on
foot from the town of Covington; I was on horseback, and met him near
the bridge over the Licking River. He asked the way to my
grandfather's house, which was about a mile off. Attracted by his
appearance, I dismounted and asked him to get on my horse, which he
declined to do; so I walked beside him. Probably because he knew how
to talk to a lad--few know the art, and those the large natures
alone--we became at once friendly. When I had shown him into the
house, I hung about to find his name. As I had never heard of Mr.
Lincoln of Illinois, it was explained to me that he was the man who
was "running against" the Little Giant. We lads all knew Stephen A.
Douglas, who was so popular that farm tools were named for him: the
Little Giant this and that of cornshellers or ploughs. While Mr.
Lincoln was with my grandfather, my mother dined or supped with him.
When she came home she said: "I have had a long talk with Mr. Lincoln,
who is called an Abolitionist; if he is an Abolitionist, I am an
Abolitionist." I well remember the horror with which this remark
inspired the household: if my mother had said she was Satan, it could
not have been worse. The droll part of the matter is that all the
reasonable people about me were in heart haters of slavery. They saw
and deplored its evils, and were full of fanciful schemes for making
an end of it. But the name Abolitionist was abominated.
I never knew what brought Mr. Lincoln to my grandfather's house. It is
likely that he came because a certain doctor of central Kentucky, an
uncle of Mr. Lincoln, a widower, had recently married an aunt of mine,
a widow. This union of two middle-aged people, each with large
families, brought trouble; since family traditions were against
divorce, a separation was effected which had an amusing though tragic
finish. When all other matters of property had been arranged and P.
had betaken himself to his plantation in Mississippi, as an
afterthought he set up a supplementary claim to a saddle mule
belonging to my aunt which he had forgotten to demand in the
settlement. This reopened the question, and it was determined in
family council that the grasping doctor should not be satisfied. We
boys had the notion that Mr. Lincoln's visit related to this episode
of the mule, for shortly after the "critter" was sent with a servant
by steamboat, to be delivered to the claimant at the landing of his
plantation on the Mississippi River. In due time the negro returned
and made report: It was that the unworthy suitor came with a group of
his friends to witness his success, mounted, and started to ride away,
but the beast, frisky from its long confinement, "stooped up behind,"
as the darkeys phrase it, and threw his master and killed him. Whether
Lincoln had a hand in the negotiations which led to this finish or
not, I am sure that the humor of it must have tickled him.