a Quaker, and the sister of Mary, wife of Abraham Lincoln the elder. There were three other sisters, Lucy, who married Richard Berry; Sarah, married to Robert Mitchell; and Elizabeth, who became Mrs Thomas Sparrow. These all removed into Kentucky, and the Hankses, Berrys, and Sparrows all play their part in the earlier chapters of Lincoln's life. Joseph Hanks, Nancy's father, who died when she was nine years old bequeathing to her "one heifer yearling called Peidy," may have had some Welsh blood in his veins,1 He left eight children, and the widow being poor, Nancy was brought up by her aunt Lucy, Mrs Richard Berry, at whose house, near Beechland, her wedding subsequently took place. Nancy herself would seem to have been at the time of their marriage a woman of twenty-three, of great charm, with dark hair and dark vivacious eyes, whose conversation was brightened by frequent sallies of fun. She had besides, according to her son, a strong memory, acute judgment and cool, heroic temper, and a nature highly intellectual. She seems to have been too sensitive a creature for the hard life of a pioneer; and the vein of humour may well have been associated, as her health failed, with a nervous and melancholy temperament. It will be noted that she was Thomas Lincoln's first cousin, both their mothers being Shipleys. This double intermarriage with members of a well-known Quaker family again recalls the affiliation to which I have already referred. The pair settled at first in Elizabethtown, where 1 See H. M. Jenkins, op. cit., and Historical Collections relating to Gwynedd. Thomas Lincoln was a carpenter; but he soon afterwards resolved to eke out his earnings by the clearing of a farm. It was not a successful venture; and his family can have derived little benefit of any kind from his removal out of the friendly village to the somewhat desolate region, a dozen miles away, which he had selected. It was there, in his cabin, three miles from Hodgensville, that, on February 12th 1809,1 his second child, Abraham, was born. As far as we can tell, little Abe's inheritance was of that "honest poverty" that need not hang its head. The comparative prosperity of his grandfather in the years before he crossed the mountains, and before the long-protracted war which had ruined so many a Virginian family, was so far forgotten that it was not even a legend to the child. His parents were poor doubtless he was well among a poor people. But content in his home by Nolin Creek, playing in and out of his father's workshop, and taking part in his mother's butter-making and spinning. When he was four years old the family crossed the ridge to the northward to another farm in a more fertile situation. But it lay so low between the hills that it was subject to disastrous flooding by the freshets after heavy rains. Here, during the next three years, he began to make himself useful to his father in a hundred ways about both farm and workshop. And under his mother's guidance, and with the very irregular and limited assistance of certain itinerant teachers, he subsequently learnt to read and write. In this respect he soon outstripped his father, who, if he could sign his name, yet always found his 1 The birthday also of Charles Darwin. his pen. Indeed, hammer much handier than although Thomas Lincoln assigned much of his own poverty to lack of education, and upon that score had a strong theoretical belief in its value, he was, in practice, sceptical about anything beyond the obviously useful rules of arithmetic. Booklearning seemed to tend perilously to waste of time upon mere stories, with consequent restlessness and general dissipation of energy. The boy was quickwitted, and soon had gained knowledge enough -according to his father's standards—while he was too likely a lad and too willing, to be spared from the always pressing tasks of a struggling farmer. Thomas Lincoln did not prosper at Knob Creek ; and when, after a spring planting of his three fields, a torrent from the hills, unheralded by any rain in the valley, swept away, not only his seed, but the very soil in which it was sown, he seems to have despaired of his second farm. Nor was the peril from flood the only one that overhung him; the title to his land does not appear to have been secure, and in the autumn of 1816, he relinquished his clearing and left Kentucky forever. Henry Clay in the meanwhile, had risen to be a great political leader. The eloquent Kentucky lawyer had become speaker of the lower House of Congress, and was the idol of the younger Republicans. They styled him already the "Statesman of the West." During Thomas Lincoln's forlorn struggle at Knob Creek, Clay's fiery eloquence had carried his countrymen into the second war with Great Britain. His popularity caused him to be chosen as one of the four Commissioners sent to Europe to negotiate the |