Note 4 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Baptisms of this noisy character were familiar to Lincoln in his boyhood and certainly as late as the period of his residence in New Salem. Henry Onstott, at whose tavern Lincoln boarded, tells of such baptisms performed by Rev. Abraham Bale, including one at which the husband of the lady who was being baptized called out to the preacher to hold her, as he valued her more highly than the best cow and calf in the county (Lincoln and Salem, p. 122).