OVER IN INDIANA
The place the father had selected for their home was a beautiful spot. They could build their cabin on a little hill, sloping gently down on all sides. The soil was excellent, but there was one serious drawback—there was no water fit to drink within a mile! Thomas Lincoln had neglected to observe this most important point while he was prospecting. His wife, or even little Abe, would have had more common sense. That was one reason why Thomas Lincoln, though a good man, who tried hard enough at times, was always poor and looked down upon by his thrifty neighbors.
Instead of taking his wife and children down the three streams by boat, as he had gone, the father borrowed two horses of a neighbor and "packed through to Posey's," where he had left his carpenter tools and the other property he had saved from the wreck of his raft. Abe and Sarah must have enjoyed the journey, especiallycamping out every night on the way. The father's skill as a marksman furnished them with tempting suppers and breakfasts of wild game.
On the horses they packed their bedding and the cooking utensils they needed while on the journey, and for use after their arrival at the new home. This stock was not large, for it consisted only of "one oven and lid, one skillet and lid, and some tinware."
After they came to Posey's, Thomas Lincoln hired a wagon and loaded it with the effects he had left there, as well as the bedding and the cooking things they had brought with them on the two horses. It was a rough wagon ride, jolting over stumps, logs, and roots of trees. An earlier settler had cut out a path for a few miles, but the rest of the way required many days, for the father had to cut down trees to make a rough road wide enough for the wagon to pass. It is not likely that Abe and Sarah minded the delays, for children generally enjoy new experiences of that sort. As for their mother, she was accustomed to all such hardships; she had learned to take life as it came and make the best of it.
Nancy Lincoln needed all her Christian fortitudein that Indiana home—if such a place could be called a home. At last they reached the chosen place, in the "fork" made by Little Pigeon Creek emptying into Big Pigeon Creek, about a mile and a half from a settlement which was afterward called Gentryville.
As it was late in the fall, Thomas Lincoln decided not to wait to cut down big trees and hew logs for a cabin, so he built a "half-faced camp," or shed enclosed on three sides, for his family to live in that winter. As this shed was made of saplings and poles, he put an ax in Abe's hands, and the seven-year-old boy helped his father build their first "home" in Indiana. It was Abe's first experience in the work that afterward made him famous as "the rail splitter." It was with the ax, as it were, that he hewed his way to the White House and became President of the United States.
Of course, little Abe Lincoln had no idea of the White House then. He may never have heard of "the President's Palace," as it used to be called—for the White House was then a gruesome, blackened ruin, burned by the British in the War of 1812. President Madison was living in a rented house nearby, while the Executive Mansionwas being restored. The blackened stone walls, left standing after the fire, werepainted white, and on that account the President's mansion came to be known as "the White House."
Little Abe, without a thought of his great future, was getting ready for it by hacking away at poles and little trees and helping his father in the very best way he knew. It was not long, then, before the "half-faced camp" was ready for his mother and sister to move into.
Then there was the water question. Dennis Hanks afterward said: "Tom Lincoln riddled his land like a honeycomb" trying to find good water. In the fall and winter they caught rainwater or melted snow and strained it, but that was not very healthful at best. So Abe and Sarah had to go a mile to a spring and carry all the water they needed to drink, and, when there had been no rain for a long time, all the water they used for cooking and washing had to be brought from there, too.
When warmer weather came, after their "long and dreary winter" of shivering in that poor shed, the "camp" did not seem so bad. Thomas Lincoln soon set about building a warmer and more substantial cabin. Abe was now eightyears old, and had had some practice in the use of the ax, so he was able to help his father still more by cutting and hewing larger logs for the new cabin. They got it ready for the family to move into before cold weather set in again.
They had to make their own furniture also. The table and chairs were made of "puncheon," or slabs of wood, with holes bored under each corner to stick the legs in. Their bedsteads were poles fitted into holes bored in logs in the walls of the cabin, and the protruding ends supported by poles or stakes driven into the ground, for Tom Lincoln had not yet laid the puncheon floor of their cabin. Abe's bed was a pile of dry leaves laid in one corner of the loft to which he climbed by means of a ladder of pegs driven into the wall, instead of stairs.
Their surroundings were such as to delight the heart of a couple of care-free children. The forest was filled with oaks, beeches, walnuts and sugar-maple trees, growing close together and free from underbrush. Now and then there was an open glade called a prairie or "lick," where the wild animals came to drink and disport themselves. Game was plentiful—deer, bears, pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks and birds of allkinds. This, with Tom Lincoln's passion for hunting, promised good things for the family to eat, as well as bearskin rugs for the bare earth floor, and deerskin curtains for the still open door and window. There were fish in the streams and wild fruits and nuts of many kinds to be found in the woods during the summer and fall. For a long time the corn for the "corndodgers" which they baked in the ashes, had to be ground by pounding, or in primitive hand-mills. Potatoes were about the only vegetable raised in large quantities, and pioneer families often made the whole meal of roasted potatoes. Once when his father had "asked the blessing" over an ashy heap of this staple, Abe remarked that they were "mighty poor blessings!"
But there were few complaints. They were all accustomed to that way of living, and they enjoyed the free and easy life of the forest. Their only reason for complaint was because they had been compelled to live in an open shed all winter, and because there was no floor to cover the damp ground in their new cabin—no oiled paper for their one window, and no door swinging in the single doorway—yet the father was carpenter and cabinet maker! There is norecord that Nancy Lincoln, weak and ailing though she was, demurred even at such needless privations.
About the only reference to this period of their life that has been preserved for us was in an odd little sketch in which Mr. Lincoln wrote of himself as "he."
"A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game."
Though shooting was the principal sport of the youth and their fathers in Lincoln's younger days, Abe was too kind to inflict needless suffering upon any of God's creatures. He had real religion in his loving heart. Even as a boy he seemed to know that
"He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God that loveth us,He made and loveth all."
In the fall of 1817, when the Lincoln family had moved from the shed into the rough log cabin, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow came and occupied the "darned little half-faced camp," as Dennis Hanks called it. Betsy Sparrow was the aunt who had brought up Nancy Hanks, and she was now a foster-mother to Dennis, her nephew. Dennis became the constant companion of the two Lincoln children. He has told most of the stories that are known of this sad time in the Lincoln boy's life.
The two families had lived there for nearly a year when Thomas and Betsy Sparrow were both seized with a terrible disease known to the settlers as the "milk-sick" because it attacked the cattle. The stricken uncle and aunt died, early in October, within a few days of each other. While his wife was ill with the same dread disease, Thomas Lincoln was at work, cutting down trees and ripping boards out of the logswith a long whipsaw with a handle at each end, which little Abe had to help him use. It was a sorrowful task for the young lad, for Abe must have known that he would soon be helping his father make his mother's coffin. They buried the Sparrows under the trees "without benefit of clergy," for ministers came seldom to that remote region.
Nancy Lincoln did not long survive the devoted aunt and uncle. She had suffered too much from exposure and privation to recover her strength when she was seized by the strange malady. One who was near her during her last illness wrote, long afterward:
"She struggled on, day by day, like the patient Christian woman she was. Abe and his sister Sarah waited on their mother, and did the little jobs and errands required of them. There was no physician nearer than thirty-five miles.
"The mother knew that she was going to die, and called the children to her bedside. She was very weak and the boy and girl leaned over her while she gave them her dying message. Placing her feeble hand on little Abe's head, she told him to be kind and good to his father and sister.
"'Be good to one another,' she said to themboth. While expressing her hope that they might live, as she had taught them to live, in the love of their kindred and the service of God, Nancy Hanks Lincoln passed from the miserable surroundings of her poor life on earth to the brightness of the Beyond, on the seventh day after she was taken sick."
To the motherless boy the thought of his blessed mother being buried without any religious service whatever added a keen pang to the bitterness of his lot. Dennis Hanks once told how eagerly Abe learned to write:
"Sometimes he would write with a piece of charcoal, or the p'int of a burnt stick, on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country town, and I made ink out of blackberry juice, briar root and a little copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas would eat the paper after a while. I made his first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We hadn't no geese them days—to make good pens of goose quills."
As soon as he was able Abe Lincoln wrote his first letter. It was addressed to Parson Elkin, the Baptist preacher, who had sometimes stayed over night with the family when they lived in Kentucky, to ask that elder to come and preacha sermon over his mother's grave. It had been a long struggle to learn to write "good enough for a preacher"—especially for a small boy who is asking such a favor of a man as "high and mighty" as a minister of the Gospel seemed to him.
It was a heartbroken plea, but the lad did not realize it. It was a short, straightforward note, but the good preacher's eyes filled with tears as he read it.
The great undertaking was not finished when the letter was written. The postage was a large matter for a little boy. It cost sixpence (equal to twelve-and-a-half cents today) to send a letter a short distance—up to thirty miles. Some letters required twenty-five cents—equal to fifty in modern money. Sometimes, when the sender could not advance the postage, the receiver had to pay it before the letter could be opened and read. On this account letters were almost as rare and as expensive as telegrams are today. When the person getting a letter could not pay the postage, it was returned to the writer, who had to pay double to get it back.
In those days one person could annoy another and put him to expense by writing him and forcinghim to pay the postage—then when the letter was opened, it was found to be full of abuse, thus making a man pay for insults to himself!
There was a great general who had suffered in this way, so he made a rule that he would receive no letters unless the postage was prepaid. One day there came to his address a long envelope containing what seemed to be an important document. But it was not stamped, and the servant had been instructed not to receive that kind of mail. So it was returned to the sender. When it came back it was discovered that it had been mailed by mistake without a stamp. That letter announced to General Zachary Taylor that he had been nominated by a great convention as candidate for President of the United States!
All this seems very strange now that a letter can be sent around the world for a few cents. Besides, the mails did not go often and were carried on horseback. For a long time one half-sick old man carried the mail on a good-for-nothing horse, once a week, between New York and Philadelphia, though they were the largest cities in the country.
So it was many months before Abe received ananswer to his letter. Elder Elkin may have been away from home on one of the long circuits covered by pioneer preachers. As the days and weeks went by without the lad's receiving any reply he was filled with misgivings lest he had imposed upon the good man's former friendship.
At last the answer came and poor Abe's anxiety was turned to joy. The kind elder not only said he would come, but he also named the Sunday when it would be, so that the Lincoln family could invite all their friends from far and near to the postponed service—for it often happened in this new country that the funeral could not take place for months after the burial.
It was late in the following Summer, nearly a year after Nancy's death, that the devoted minister came. The word had gone out to all the region round about. It was the religious event of the season. Hundreds of people of all ages came from twenty miles around on horseback—a father, mother and two children on one horse—also in oxcarts, and on foot. They sat in groups in the wagons, and on the green grass, as at the feeding of the multitudes in the time of the Christ. But these people brought their own refreshments as if it were a picnic.
They talked together in low, solemn tones while waiting for the poor little funeral procession to march out from the Lincoln cabin to the grass-covered grave. Pioneer etiquette required the formalities of a funeral. Elder Elkin was followed by the widowed husband, with Abraham and Sarah and poor Cousin Dennis, also bereaved of his foster-parents, and now a member of the Lincoln family.
There were tender hearts behind those hardened faces, and tears glistened on the tanned cheeks of many in that motley assemblage of eager listeners, while the good elder was paying the last tribute of earth to the sweet and patient memory of his departed friend of other days.
The words of the man of God, telling that assembled multitude what a lovely and devoted girl and woman his mother had been, gave sweet and solemn joy to the soul of the little Lincoln boy. It was all for her dear sake, and she was, of all women, worthy of this sacred respect. As he gazed around on the weeping people, he thought of the hopes and fears of the months that had passed since he wrote his first letter to bring this about.
"God bless my angel mother!" burst from hislonely lips—"how glad I am I've learned to write!"
THE COMING OF ANOTHER MOTHER
All that a young girl of twelve could do, assisted by a willing brother of ten, was done by Sarah and Abraham Lincoln to make that desolate cabin a home for their lonesome father, and for cousin Dennis Hanks, whose young life had been twice darkened by a double bereavement. But "what is home without a mother?" Thomas Lincoln, missing the balance and inspiration of a patient wife, became more and more restless, and, after a year, wandered back again to his former homes and haunts in Kentucky.
While visiting Elizabethtown he saw a former sweetheart, the Sally Bush of younger days, now Mrs. Daniel Johnston, widow of the county jailer who had recently died, leaving three children and considerable property, for that time and place. Thomas renewed his suit and won the pitying heart of Sarah Johnston, and according to the story of the county clerk:
"The next morning, December 2, 1819, I issued the license, and the same day they weremarried, bundled up, and started for home."
Imagine the glad surprise of the three children who had been left at home for weeks, when they saw a smart, covered wagon, drawn by four horses, driven up before the cabin door one bright winter day, and their father, active and alert, spring out and assist a pleasant-looking woman and three children to alight! Then they were told that this woman was to be their mother and they had two more sisters and another brother!
To the poor forlorn Lincoln children and their still more desolate cousin, it seemed too good to be true. They quickly learned the names of their new brother and sisters. The Johnston children were called John, Sarah and Matilda, so Sarah Lincoln's name was promptly changed to Nancy for her dead mother, as there were two Sarahs already in the combined family.
Mrs. Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln lost no time in taking poor Abe and Nancy Lincoln to her great motherly heart, as if they were her own. They were dirty, for they had been neglected, ill-used and deserted. She washed their wasted bodies clean and dressed them in nice warm clothing provided for her own children,till she, as she expressed it, "made them look more human."
Dennis Hanks told afterward of the great difference the stepmother made in their young lives:
"In fact, in a few weeks all had changed; and where everything had been wanting, all was snug and comfortable. She was a woman of great energy, of remarkable good sense, very industrious and saving, also very neat and tidy in her person and manners. She took an especial liking for young Abe. Her love for him was warmly returned, and continued to the day of his death. But few children love their parents as he loved his stepmother. She dressed him up in entire new clothes, and from that time on he appeared to lead a new life. He was encouraged by her to study, and a wish on his part was gratified when it could be done. The two sets of children got along finely together, as if they all had been the children of the same parents."
Dennis also referred to the "large supply of household goods" the new mother brought with her:
"One fine bureau (worth $40), one table, one set of chairs, one large clothes chest, cookingutensils, knives, forks, bedding and other articles."
It must have been a glorious day when such a splendid array of household furniture was carried into the rude cabin of Thomas Lincoln. But best of all, the new wife had sufficient tact and force of will to induce her good-hearted but shiftless husband to lay a floor, put in a window, and hang a door to protect his doubled family from the cold. It was about Christmas time, and the Lincoln children, as they nestled in warm beds for the first time in their lives, must have thanked their second mother from the bottoms of their grateful hearts.
Lincoln once wrote, in a letter to a friend, about his early teachers in Indiana:
"He (father) removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the timethe State came into the Union. It was a wild region with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so-called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beside readin', writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three (simple proportion). If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education."
Abe's first teacher in Indiana, however, was Hazel Dorsey. The school house was built of rough, round logs. The chimney was made of poles well covered with clay. The windows were spaces cut in the logs, and covered with greased paper. But Abe was determined to learn. He and his sister thought nothing of walking four miles a day through snow, rain and mud. "Nat" Grigsby, who afterward married the sister, spoke in glowing terms of Abe's few school days:
"He was always at school early, and attended to his studies. He lost no time at home, and when not at work was at his books. He kept up his studies on Sunday, and carried his bookswith him to work, so that he might read when he rested from labor."
Thomas Lincoln had no use for "eddication," as he called it. "It will spile the boy," he kept saying. He—the father—had got along better without going to school, and why should Abe have a better education than his father? He thought Abe's studious habits were due to "pure laziness, jest to git shet o' workin'." So, whenever there was the slightest excuse, he took Abe out of school and set him to work at home or for one of the neighbors, while he himself went hunting or loafed about the house.
This must have been very trying to a boy as hungry to learn as Abe Lincoln was. His new mother saw and sympathized with him, and in her quiet way, managed to get the boy started to school, for a few weeks at most. For some reason Hazel Dorsey stopped "keeping" the school, and there was a long "vacation" for all the children. But a new man, Andrew Crawford, came and settled near Gentryville. Having nothing better to do at first, he was urged to reopen the school.
One evening Abe came in from his work and his stepmother greeted him with:
"Another chance for you to go to school."
"Where?"
"That man Crawford that moved in a while ago is to begin school next week, and two miles and back every day will be just about enough for you to walk to keep your legs limber."
The tactful wife accomplished it somehow and Abe started off to school with Nancy, and a light heart. A neighbor described him as he appeared in Crawford's school, as "long, wiry and strong, while his big feet and hands, and the length of his legs and arms, were out of all proportion to his small trunk and head. His complexion was swarthy, and his skin shriveled and yellow even then. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey-woolsey shirt, and a coonskin cap. The breeches hung close to his legs, but were far from meeting the tops of his shoes, exposing 'twelve inches of shinbone, sharp, blue and narrow.'"
"Yet," said Nat Grigsby, "he was always in good health, never sick, and had an excellent constitution."
HELPING KATE ROBY SPELL
Andrew Crawford must have been an unusualman, for he tried to teach "manners" in his backwoods school! Spelling was considered a great accomplishment. Abe shone as a speller in school and at the spelling-matches. One day, evidently during a period when young Lincoln was kept from school to do some outside work for his father, he appeared at the window when the class in spelling was on the floor. The word "defied" was given out and several pupils had misspelled it. Kate Roby, the pretty girl of the village, was stammering over it. "D-e-f," said Kate, then she hesitated over the next letter. Abe pointed to his eye and winked significantly. The girl took the hint and went on glibly "i-e-d," and "went up head."
"I DID IT!"
There was a buck's head nailed over the school house door. It proved a temptation to young Lincoln, who was tall enough to reach it easily. One day the schoolmaster discovered that one horn was broken and he demanded to know who had done the damage. There was silence and a general denial till Abe spoke up sturdily:
"I did it. I did not mean to do it, but I hungon it—and it broke!" The other boys thought Abe was foolish to "own up" till he had to—but that was his way.
It is doubtful if Abe Lincoln owned an arithmetic. He had a copybook, made by himself, in which he entered tables of weights and measures and "sums" he had to do. Among these was a specimen of schoolboy doggerel:
"Abraham Lincoln,His hand and pen,He will be good—But God knows when!"
In another place he wrote some solemn reflections on the value of time:
"Time, what an empty vapor 'tis,And days, how swift they are!Swift as an Indian arrow—Fly on like a shooting star.The present moment, just, is here,Then slides away in haste,That we can never say they're ours,But only say they're past."
As he grew older his handwriting improved and he was often asked to "set copies" for otherboys to follow. In the book of a boy named Richardson, he wrote this prophetic couplet:
"Good boys who to their books applyWill all be great men by and by."
A "MOTHER'S BOY"—HIS FOOD AND CLOTHING
Dennis Hanks related of his young companion: "As far as food and clothing were concerned, the boy had plenty—such as it was—'corndodgers,' bacon and game, some fish and wild fruits. We had very little wheat flour. The nearest mill was eighteen miles. A hoss mill it was, with a plug (old horse) pullin' a beam around; and Abe used to say his dog could stand and eat the flour as fast as it was made,and then be ready for supper!
"For clothing he had jeans. He was grown before he wore all-wool pants. It was a new country, and he was a raw boy, rather a bright and likely lad; but the big world seemed far ahead of him. We were all slow-goin' folks. But he had the stuff of greatness in him. He got his rare sense and sterling principles from both parents. But Abe's kindliness, humor, love of humanity, hatred of slavery, all camefrom his mother. I am free to say Abe was a 'mother's boy.'"
Dennis used to like to tell of Abe's earliest ventures in the fields of literature: "His first readin' book was Webster's speller. Then he got hold of a book—I can't rickilect the name. It told about a feller, a nigger or suthin', that sailed a flatboat up to a rock, and the rock was magnetized and drawed the nails out of his boat, an' he got a duckin', or drownded, or suthin', I forget now. (This book, of course, was 'The Arabian Nights.') Abe would lay on the floor with a chair under his head, and laugh over them stories by the hour. I told him they was likely lies from end to end; but he learned to read right well in them."
His stock of books was small, but they were the right kind—the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress," Æsop's Fables, "Robinson Crusoe," a history of the United States, and the Statutes of Indiana. This last was a strange book for a boy to read, but Abe pored over it as eagerly as a lad to-day might read "The Three Guardsmen," or "The Hound of the Baskervilles." He made notes of what he read with his turkey-buzzard pen and brier-root ink. If he did nothave these handy, he would write with a piece of charcoal or the charred end of a stick, on a board, or on the under side of a chair or bench. He used the wooden fire shovel for a slate, shaving it off clean when both sides were full of figures. When he got hold of paper enough to make a copy-book he would go about transferring his notes from boards, beams, under sides of the chairs and the table, and from all the queer places he had put them down, on the spur of the moment.
Besides the books he had at hand, he borrowed all he could get, often walking many miles for a book, until, as he once told a friend, he "read through every book he had ever heard of in that country, for a circuit of fifty miles"—quite a circulating library!
"THE BEGINNING OF LOVE"
"The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." It must have been about this time that the lad had the following experience, which he himself related to a legal friend, with his chair tilted back and his knees "cocked up" in the manner described by Cousin John Hanks:
"Did you ever write out a story in your mind? I did when I was little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they were the first of the kind I ever heard. I took a great fancy to one of the girls; and when they were gone I thought of her a good deal, and one day, when I was sitting out in the sun by the house, I wrote out a story in my mind.
"I thought I took my father's horse and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were surprised to see me.
"I talked with the girl and persuaded her to elope with me; and that night I put her on my horse and we started off across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and when we rode up we found it was one we had left a few hours before and went in.
"The next night we tried again, and the same thing happened—the horse came back to the same place; and then we concluded we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father that he ought to give her to me.
"I always meant to write that story out andpublish it, and I began once; but I concluded it was not much of a story.
"But I think that was the beginning of love with me."
HOW ABE CAME TO OWN WEEMS'S "LIFE OF WASHINGTON"
Abe's chief delight, if permitted to do so, was to lie in the shade of some inviting tree and read. He liked to lie on his stomach before the fire at night, and often read as long as this flickering light lasted. He sometimes took a book to bed to read as soon as the morning light began to come through the chinks between the logs beside his bed. He once placed a book between the logs to have it handy in the morning, and a storm came up and soaked it with dirty water from the "mud-daubed" mortar, plastered between the logs of the cabin.
The book happened to be Weems's "Life of Washington." Abe was in a sad dilemma. What could he say to the owner of the book, which he had borrowed from the meanest man in the neighborhood, Josiah Crawford, who was so unpopular that he went by the nickname of "Old Blue Nose"?
The only course was to show the angry owner his precious volume, warped and stained as it was, and offer to do anything he could to repay him.
"Abe," said "Old Blue Nose," with bloodcurdling friendliness, "bein' as it's you, Abe, I won't be hard on you. You jest come over and pull fodder for me, and the book is yours."
"All right," said Abe, his deep-set eyes twinkling in spite of himself at the thought of owning the story of the life of the greatest of heroes, "how much fodder?"
"Wal," said old Josiah, "that book's worth seventy-five cents, at least. You kin earn twenty-five cents a day—that will make three days. You come and pull all you can in three days and you may have the book."
That was an exorbitant price, even if the book were new, but Abe was at the old man's mercy. He realized this, and made the best of a bad bargain. He cheerfully did the work for a man who was mean enough to take advantage of his misfortune. He comforted himself with the thought that he would be the owner of the precious "Life of Washington." Long afterward, in a speech before the New Jersey Legislature,on his way to Washington to be inaugurated, like Washington, as President of the United States, he referred to this strange book.
"THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH"
One morning, on his way to work, with an ax on his shoulder, his stepsister, Matilda Johnston, though forbidden by her mother to follow Abe, crept after him, and with a cat-like spring landed between his shoulders and pressed her sharp knees into the small of his back.
Taken unawares, Abe staggered backward and ax and girl fell to the ground together. The sharp implement cut her ankle badly, and mischievous Matilda shrieked with fright and pain when she saw the blood gushing from the wound. Young Lincoln tore a sleeve from his shirt to bandage the gash and bound up the ankle as well as he could. Then he tried to teach the still sobbing girl a lesson.
"'Tilda," he said gently, "I'm surprised. Why did you disobey mother?"
Matilda only wept silently, and the lad went on, "What are you going to tell mother about it?"
"Tell her I did it with the ax," sobbed the young girl. "That will be the truth, too."
"Yes," said Abe severely, "that's the truth, but notallthe truth. You just tell the whole truth, 'Tilda, and trust mother for the rest."
Matilda went limping home and told her mother the whole story, and the good woman was so sorry for her that, as the girl told Abe that evening, "she didn't even scold me."
"BOUNDING A THOUGHT—NORTH, SOUTH, EAST AND WEST"
Abe sometimes heard things in the simple conversation of friends that disturbed him because they seemed beyond his comprehension. He said of this:
"I remember how, when a child, I used to get irritated when any one talked to me in a way I couldn't understand.
"I do not think I ever got angry with anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my temper—and has ever since.
"I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down, trying to makeout what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings.
"I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, and had put in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend.
"This was a kind of a passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now when I am bounding a thought, till I have bounded it east, and bounded it west, and bounded it north, and bounded it south."
HIGH PRAISE FROM HIS STEPMOTHER
Not long before her death, Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, called upon Mrs. Sarah Lincoln to collect material for a "Life of Lincoln" he was preparing to write. This was the best of all the things she related of her illustrious stepson:
"I can say what scarcely one mother in a thousand can say, Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I asked him. His mind and mine seemed to run together.
"I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys, but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or expect to see."
"Charity begins at home"—and so do truth and honesty. Abraham Lincoln could not have become so popular all over the world on account of his honest kindheartedness if he had not been loyal, obedient and loving toward those at home. Popularity, also, "begins at home." A mean, disagreeable, dishonest boy may become a king, because he was "to the manner born." But only a good, kind, honest man, considerate of others, can be elected President of the United States.
"PREACHING" AGAINST CRUELTY TO ANIMALS
Nat Grigsby stated once that writing compositions was not required by Schoolmaster Crawford, but "Abe took it up on his own account,"and his first essay was against cruelty to animals.
The boys of the neighborhood made a practice of catching terrapins and laying live coals on their backs. Abe caught a group of them at this cruel sport one day, and rushed to the relief of the helpless turtle. Snatching the shingle that one of the boys was using to handle the coals, he brushed them off the turtle's shell, and with angry tears in his eyes, proceeded to use it on one of the offenders, while he called the rest a lot of cowards.
One day his stepbrother, John Johnston, according to his sister Matilda, "caught a terrapin, brought it to the place where Abe was 'preaching,' threw it against a tree and crushed its shell." Abe then preached against cruelty to animals, contending that "an ant's life is as sweet to it as ours is to us."
ROUGHLY DISCIPLINED FOR BEING "FORWARD"
Abe was compelled to leave school on the slightest pretext to work for the neighbors. He was so big and strong—attaining his full height at seventeen—that his services were more in demand than those of his stepbrother, John Johnston,or of Cousin Dennis. Abe was called lazy because the neighbors shared the idea of Thomas Lincoln, that his reading and studying were only a pretext for shirking. Yet he was never so idle as either Dennis Hanks or John Johnston, who were permitted to go hunting or fishing with Tom Lincoln, while Abe stayed out of school to do the work that one of the three older men should have done.
Abe's father was kinder in many ways to his stepchildren than he was to his own son. This may have been due to the fact that he did not wish to be thought "partial" to his own child. No doubt Abe was "forward." He liked to take part in any discussion, and sometimes he broke into the conversation when his opinion had not been asked. Besides, he got into arguments with his fellow-laborers, and wasted the time belonging to his employer.
One day, according to Dennis, they were all working together in the field, when a man rode up on horseback and asked a question. Abe was the first to mount the fence to answer the stranger and engage him in conversation. To teach his son better "manners" in the presence of his "superiors," Thomas Lincoln struck Abea heavy blow which knocked him backward off the fence, and silenced him for a time.
Of course, every one present laughed at Abe's discomfiture, and the neighbors approved of Thomas Lincoln's rude act as a matter of discipline. In their opinion Abe Lincoln was getting altogether too smart. While they enjoyed his homely wit and good nature, they did not like to admit that he was in any way their superior. A visitor to Springfield, Ill., will even now find some of Lincoln's old neighbors eager to say "there were a dozen smarter men in this city than Lincoln" when he "happened to get nominated for the presidency!"
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
Abe was "hail fellow, well met" everywhere. The women comprehended his true greatness before the men did so. There was a rough gallantry about him, which, though lacking in "polish," was true, "heart-of-oak" politeness. He wished every one well. His whole life passed with "malice toward none, with charity for all."
When he "went out evenings" Abe Lincoln took the greatest pains to make everybody comfortableand happy. He was sure to bring in the biggest backlog and make the brightest fire. He read "the funniest fortunes" for the young people from the sparks as they flew up the chimney. He was the best helper in paring the apples, shelling the corn and cracking the nuts for the evening's refreshments.
When he went to spelling school, after the first few times, he was not allowed to take part in the spelling match because everybody knew that the side that "chose first" would get Abe Lincoln and he always "spelled down." But he went just the same and had a good time himself if he could add to the enjoyment of the rest.
He went swimming, warm evenings, with the boys, and ran races, jumped and wrestled at noon-times, which was supposed to be given up to eating and resting. He was "the life" of the husking-bee and barn raising, and was always present, often as a judge because of his humor, fairness and tact, at horse races. He engaged heartily in every kind of "manly sport" which did not entail unnecessary suffering upon helpless animals.
Coon hunting, however, was an exception. The coon was a pest and a plague to the farmer,so it should be got rid of. He once told the following story:
THE LITTLE YELLOW "COON DOG"
"My father had a little yellow house dog which invariably gave the alarm if we boys undertook to slip away unobserved after night had set in—as we sometimes did—to go coon hunting. One night my brother, John Johnston, and I, with the usual complement of boys required for a successful coon hunt, took the insignificant little cur with us.
"We located the coveted coon, killed him, and then in a sporting vein, sewed the coon skin on the little dog.
"It struggled vigorously during the operation of sewing on, and when released made a bee-line for home. Some larger dogs on the way, scenting coon, tracked the little animal home and apparently mistaking him for a real coon, speedily demolished him. The next morning, father found, lying in his yard, the lifeless remains of yellow 'Joe,' with strong circumstantial evidence, in the form of fragments of coon skin, against us.
"Father was much incensed at his death, butas John and I, scantily protected from the morning wind, stood shivering in the doorway, we felt assured that little yellow Joe would never again be able to sound the alarm of another coon hunt."