William H. Herndon, Jesse William Weik, Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, Etiam in minimis major, The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln by William H. Herndon, for twenty years his friend and Jesse William Weik

[17] residence in Kentucky. One man,¹ who was a clerk in the principal store in the village where the Lincolns purchased their family supplies, remembers him as a “small boy who came sometimes to the store with his mother. He would take his seat on a keg of nails, and I would give him a lump of sugar. He would sit there and eat it like any other boy; but these little acts of kindness,” observes my informant, in an enthusiastic statement made in 1865, “so impressed his mind that I made a steadfast friend in a man whose power and influence have since been felt throughout the world.” A school-mate² of Lincoln's at Hazel's school, speaking of the master, says: “He perhaps could teach spelling and reading and indifferent writing, and possibly could cipher to the rule of three; but he had no other qualification of a teacher, unless we accept large size and bodily strength. Abe was a mere spindle of a boy, had his due proportion of harmless mischief, but as we, lived in a country abounding in hazel switches, in the virtue of which the master had great faith, Abe of course received his due allowance.”

This part of the boy's history is painfully vague and dim, and even after arriving at man's estate Mr. Lincoln was significantly reserved when reference was made to it. It is barely mentioned in the autobiography furnished to Fell in 1859. John Duncan,³ afterwards a preacher of some