Note v-11 — Chapter V · HONESTY IN POLITICS

The practice of carrying documents in his hat became a habit with Lincoln. While at the bar in Springfield, long after the postmastership had become a memory, he explained his failure to answer a communication promptly, by writing: “When I received your letter I put it in my old hat, and buying a new one the next day, the old one was set aside, and so the letter was lost sight of for a time.” (See Tarbell, i, 98; and Tarbell’s Early Life, 179.)