It was a lie out of whole cloth with nothing whatever to support or excuse it.

I reached the bottom of it to discover proof of its baselessness abundant and conclusive.

In Johnson's case I take it that the story had nothing other to rest on than the obscurity of his birth and the quality of his talents.

Late in life Johnson went to Raleigh and caused to be erected a modest tablet over the spot pointed out as the grave of his progenitor, saying, I was told by persons claiming to have been present, "I place this stone over the last earthly abode of my alleged father." Johnson, in the saying of the countryside, "out-married himself." His wife was a plain woman, but came of good family.

One day, when a child, so the legend ran, she saw passing through the Greenville street in which her people lived, a woman, a boy and a cow, the boy carrying a pack over his shoulder.