In addition, however, to these private gymnastics Lincoln shared with
his neighbors a public and popular source of intellectual and human
insight. The Western pioneers, for all their exclusive devotion to
practical purposes, wasted a good deal of time on apparently useless
social intercourse. In the Middle Western towns of that day there was,
as we have seen, an extraordinary amount of good-fellowship, which was
quite the most wholesome and humanizing thing which entered into the
lines of these hard-working and hard-featured men. The whole male
countryside was in its way a club; and when the presence of women did
not make them awkward and sentimental, the men let themselves loose in
an amount of rough pleasantry and free conversation, which added the one
genial and liberating touch to their lives. This club life of his own
people Lincoln enjoyed and shared much more than did his average
neighbor. He passed the greater part of what he would have called his
leisure time in swapping with his friends stories, in which the genial
and humorous side of Western life was embodied.
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