Doubtless his domestic unhappiness had much to do with his vagrancy; but his native instinct for the wholesome and illuminating aspect of the life around him brought him more frequently than any other cause to the club of loafers in the general store.

And whatever the promiscuous conversation and the racy yarns meant to his associates, they meant vastly more to Lincoln.

His hours of social vagrancy really completed the process of his intellectual training.

It relieved his culture from the taint of bookishness.

It gave substance to his humor.