noon
`` Sometimes , '' the farmer said , `` I get awful mad at you , Abe Lincoln . You crack your jokes and spin your yarns , if you want to , while the men are eating their dinner . But do n't you keep them from working . '' The other farm hands liked to gather around Abe when they stopped to eat their noon meal . Sometimes he would stand on a tree stump and `` speechify . '' The men would become so interested that they would be late getting back to the fields . Other times he would tell them stories that he had read in books or that he had heard from some traveler who had passed through Pigeon Creek .