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the dark loft above, and separated even from the very paper and binding.

Night after night, with special care, the book was deposited upon a little shelf against the wall of the room below. There were two stout pegs in the log, and a shingle laid across them made the shelf. The book should have been in safety there, if anywhere. It was a pity, however, that Abe should have failed to examine the mud "chinking" of those logs, for it had fallen out just above the shelf, leaving a crack which was full of peril to literature. There came a night, when he and Dennis Hanks were sound asleep, that was full of wind and rain. Gust after gust drove in the flying water through the cranny in the wall, and the shelf was flooded and the precious book was drowned.

When morning came, there lay the soaked and ruined relics of the only "Life of Washington" in all that part of Indiana. It was of little use to dry the leaves in the sun. Abe did so with sorrowful care, and then he bore them home to their owner; but old Josiah refused to receive them.

"Reckon I'll have to make it good somehow," said Abe, mournfully. "What's it wuth?"

"Seventy-five cents; and I don't know whar I'll git another." He might as well have said seventy-five thousand, and Abe very frankly told him so.

"Well, Abe," said old Josiah, at last, "seein' it's you, I tell ye what I'll do. You pull fodder for me three days, at twentyfive cents a day, and I'll call it squar."

"I'll do it, and I'll jest keep what thar is left of the book." It had been a well-thumbed, dog's-eared affair, and Crawford had sold it to Abe, after this fashion, at a remarkably high price. So high, in fact, that Abe's remorse did not prevent his sense of justice from rebelling even while he consented to come and pull the fodder. He and Josiah Crawford were never more good friends, and more than a little good-tempered "getting even" had to be performed for a long time afterwards.

CHAPTER VII.

FRONTIER TRAINING.

Oratorical Beginnings-Frontier Politics-Hiring Out-A Wedding and a Funeral-Studies among Plain People-A Glimpse into Law.

Now that there were so many settlers, the religious gatherings at the Little Pigeon Creek meeting-house became more frequent. Whenever there was preaching of any kind, Mrs. Sally Lincoln was sure to go, and to insist on taking her husband with her. It made small difference to Tom, indeed, to what sect the preacher of the day might belong. He himself had been, in his day, a member of several sects, and not a very shining ornament to either of them. No change whatever was required when he moved from one into another.

The young people were frequently left at home; but they had preaching among them nevertheless, albeit with more of rough fun than profitable doctrine in the sermons. No sooner were their elders out of sight among the trees than the family Bible would come down from its shelf, and Abe knew its contents quite well enough to find any text he wanted.

"Now, girls," he would say, "you and John and Dennis do the cryin'. I'll do the preachin'."

A hymn or so was given out and sung, and the sermon was only too likely to be a taking off of the style and eccentricities of some traveling exhorter they had heard at the meetinghouse. Not always, indeed; for Abe once preached a sermon, on his favorite theme of "cruelty to animals," which was remembered for many years by one little girl, a neighbor, who was that day a member of his childish congregation.

The born orator within him was coming to the surface, and

preaching in the house on Sundays led very naturally to stumpspeaking in the fields on other days in times of political excitement. Abe began his training in that school before he was sixteen years old. He advanced so rapidly that before long he could draw the hands in a corn-field away from their husking at any moment by the droll originality of his boyish addresses.

It was a positive relief to a young fellow who was thinking so much and so hard to talk out some part of his internal fermentation. Political affairs occupied a large share of the thoughts and conversations of the Pigeon Creek people, and were attended to from house to house as the best possible excuse for a visit and chat.

A whole family could go over and make a call upon another family, and visitors were always welcome. There was the freest hospitality. If there were not chairs and benches enough, the floor was an excellent place for man or woman to sit down upon. If apples were scarce, or if the supply had given out, a plate of raw potatoes or turnips, nicely washed, could be offered instead, with a bottle of whisky: and there was the very soul of liberality in the offering.

There was one feature of frontier hospitality, indeed, to which Abraham Lincoln never at any time took kindly. He could not bring himself to the use of any description of intoxicating liquor, and in due time he both spoke and wrote against what he perceived to be a social curse and scourge. Such a body as his might perhaps have been persuaded to accept the common custom, but the clear common-sense of his inner boy rebelled and prevented him from acquiring a taste for anything containing alcohol.

Body and mind, he was now growing with tremendous rapidity; but the lessons he was receiving did not come by way of any professional school-teacher after he triumphed over "manners" and the spelling-book under Andrew Crawford.

One lesson of life began with a wedding in the old loghouse, when Nancy, or rather Sally, Hanks Lincoln reached her

eighteenth year. It was the merriest day the place had seen since Tom Lincoln halted his tired horses on the knoll and planned his first "pole-shelter." Sally became Mrs. Grigsby, and left her father's cabin to live in that of her husband.

It was not too far away for Abe to make frequent visits to his married sister; but within the year the young bride was removed to a more distant country, and Aaron Grigsby was a widower.

Abraham was now the sole remaining child of Mrs. Nancy Hanks Lincoln, but he was as a favorite son to his loving stepmother. The shadows grew deeper upon his queer, strongly marked face whenever it was in repose, but there was somewhat less of that than formerly. The great sociability of his nature was called into more frequent activity as time went on. His love of fun and his peculiar capacity for making it rendered him a welcome visitor throughout the scattered settlement. He was liked by all women old and young for his kindliness, and he was the most popular of all the idlers who strolled from their cabins and corn-fields into what had now become the village of Gentryville. Idling, in fact, at all seasons when no work is pressing, is one of the fixed institutions of a new country, and this may in part be owing to the amount and nature of the compulsory hard work.

As for Tom Lincoln, the older he grew the stronger became his tendency to shift the drudgeries of his farm upon Abe and John Johnston and Dennis Hanks, but his thrifty and stirring wife insisted that the work should be done by some one. Abe did his duty by her, as she affectionately boasted in after-years, but he was now developing a strong preference for working upon any other piece of ground than the Lincoln farm. He chose to hire himself out to other farmers for any kind of labor, even if his father got most of the benefit by receiving his wages for him. His services were always in request. He could chop more wood, handle more hay, husk more corn, and lift a heavier weight than any other young fellow to be had

for the hiring, and he was perpetually good-humored and obliging. He was a favorite with all children, and their mothers liked to have around the house a "hand" who, after his field-work was over, was equally ready to 'tend baby, go for a bucket of water, tell a story, or recite any required amount of poetry. His memory held everything tenaciously and in condition for instant use. It was stored not only with the miscellaneous contents of his scrap-book and with such passages of prose or verse as had impressed him in his reading, but also with every telling jingle he had heard. If he went to meeting, he could afterwards repeat the sermon almost word for word. The very narrowness of his singular course of study had put his naturally good memory into excellent training, and he did not as yet know so many things, acquired either by sight or hearing, that his mind had not ample space and elbow-room for all of them.

From house to house and from farm to farm the tall stripling went the rounds as he might be hired, little thinking or caring how thorough a knowledge he was by that means obtaining of the character of the different classes of people who were filling up the great West. great West. He could but study them unconsciously as he went and came, and he was learning more about them than some of them knew about themselves. He knew from whence they had emigrated, and how people lived in those distant communities. He became familiar with habits, prejudices, superstitions, religious beliefs, political ideas, social distinctions, varied hopes and fears, and aspirations and disappointments. He learned, too, somewhat of different nationalities and the races of which these settlers were born or had descended, and to what extent they had become intelligent members of a self-governing community.

He could not know at the time through what a school he was passing, but every step of his after-life proved that not any of those hard lessons-by-the-way, so useless to another man, had been wasted upon him. There was no manner of miracle

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