Of the more than five hundred friends and contemporaries of Lincoln to whom credit for material is given in the original edition, scarcely a dozen are living at the date of this second edition.

Therefore, the value of these reminiscences increases with time.

They were gathered largely at first hand.

They can never be replaced, nor can they ever be very much extended.
This book brings Lincoln the man, not Lincoln the tradition, very near to us.

Browning asked, "And did you once see Shelley plain?
And did he stop and speak to you ?" The men whose narratives make up a large part of this book all saw Lincoln plain, and here tell us what he spoke to them, and how he looked and seemed while saying it.