in the woods, and the cows gave them milk. The three children were left alone in the cabin without windows, door, or floor.

But a great surprise awaited them. About Christmas time, three loaded wagons came creaking through the woods. The three, ragged, dirty, shivering children stood out by the cabin door to see what this could mean. The man by the driver was surely their father. There was a driver, a woman and three children besides. The wagons were loaded with furniture. They stopped at their door. The woman was tall, clean, well dressed, and had a kind face and voice. She said, "I am your father's wife and will try to be a good mother to you." If Abe ever heard fairy stories, he must have said to himself this is just like a fairy tale. His own mother had loved him very much, but she was weak and sick and discouraged most of the time. Abe often felt sorry for her. The hard, cheerless living since they had laid her away under the trees had not cheered him. Now that he had no one to teach him to read he saw no hope ahead. But here came a lovely, kind and strong woman, who said, "I will be your mother." How joy and hope must have entered into his heart. We know he promised himself that he would be good to her. For when this woman was old and Abe had been President of the United States, when he had given his life for the good of others, she said, "Abe was the best boy I ever saw or expect to see. He never gave me a cross word or look in his life."

Mrs. Lincoln had three children of her own and they came to live with them. The furniture was put into the house. Abe and his sister were cleaned up and dressed in clean, comfortable clothing. A good supper was prepared. A great change had come into the life of the lonely children. Windows, a door, and a floor were soon put in the house, the cracks between the logs were plastered shut, the old, dirty corn husk mattress in the corner was taken out and a nice feather bed on a bedstead took its place. Beds were made up in the garret of the cabin for the boys. The good woman grew better every day. She made the father fix up things. She was kind to Abe and he loved her very much. She loved him too, for she saw that he was a good boy and anxious to learn. He was always talking to his new mother, asking her all sorts of questions, and telling her how much he wished to know everything. She allowed no one to disturb him when he was reading and she made the father let him go to school.

Abraham and his step brothers and sisters got along nicely together. There were eight in all living in the little log cabin. The mother so managed it that all had a good time. Abe worked for the neighbors a great deal. The money which he earned was given to his father. He borrowed all the books that he could hear of, was never without a book. When others rested from work he was reading. He read at night when the rest were asleep. By the time he was twenty-one, he knew more of what is in books than any one in the neighborhood. He remembered all he read and all the stories he heard and could tell them in a way that pleased and instructed every one.

THE LINCOLN HOME IN THE SANGAMON BOTTOM, NEAR DECATUR, ILLINOIS. IN 1830. Reproduced by permission from "How Abraham Lincoln Became President," by J. McCan Davis.

LIFE IN ILLINOIS.

In 1830, Thomas Lincoln decided to remove to Illinois. We will let Dennis Hanks tell about the moving as he told it to Eleanor Atkinson: sitting in his chair at Charleston, Illinois, at the age of ninety-two:

Well! Lemme see. Yes; I reckon it was John Hanks 'at got restless fust an' lit out fur Illinois, an' wrote fur us all to come, an' he'd git land fur us. Tom was always ready to move. He never had his land in Indiany all paid fur, nohow. So he sold off his corn an' hogs an' piled everything into oxwagons an' we all went-Linkhorns and Hankses an' Johnstons, all hangin' together. I reckon we was like one o' them tribes o' Israel that you kain't break up, nohow. An' Tom was always lookin' fur the land o' Canaan. Thar was five families of us, then, an' Abe. It tuk us two weeks to git thar, raftin' over the Wabash, cuttin' our way through the woods, fordin' rivers, pryin' wagons an' steers out o' sloughs with fence rails, an' makin' camp. Abe cracked a joke every time he cracked a whip, an' he found a way out o' every tight place while the rest of us was standin' round scratchin' our fool heads. I reckon Abe and Aunt Sairy run that movin', an' good thing they did, or it'd 'a' ben run into a swamp an' sucked under.

"It was a purty kentry up on the Sangamon, an' we all tuk up with the idy that they could run steamboats up to our cornfields an' load; but we had fever'n ager turrible, so in a year or two, we moved back here to Coles county, and we've ben here ever sence. Abe helped put up a cabin for Tom on the Sangamon, clear fifteen acres fur corn, an' split walnut rails to fence it in. Abe was some'ers 'round twenty-one.-From "Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln," McClure Co., New York.

As soon as Abraham had settled his parents in their new home, he began working for the neighbors, splitting rails and doing such other work as came to hand. He helped float a flat boat down the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi to New Orleans. He then became a clerk in a store which his employer Offutt started at New Salem on the Sangamon near the present town of Petersburg. Offutt knew Lincoln's great strength and was constantly bragging about how easily Abe could whip any fellow in the town. We shall see how this got Abe into trouble.

LIFE AT NEW SALEM.
[Nicholay and Hay.]

Public opinion at New Salem was formed by a crowd of ruffianly young fellows who were called the "Clary's Grove Boys." Once or twice a week they descended upon the village and passed the day in drinking, fighting, and brutal horse-play. If a stranger appeared in the place, he was likely to suffer a rude initiation into the social life of New Salem at the hands of these jovial savages. Sometimes he was nailed up in a hogshead and rolled down hill; sometimes he was insulted into a fight and then mauled black and blue; for despite their pretensions to chivalry they had no scruples about fair play or any such superstitions of civilization. At first they did not seem inclined to molest young Lincoln. His appearance did not invite insolence; his reputation for strength and activity was a greater protection to him than his inoffensive good-nature. But the loud admiration of Offutt gave them umbrage. It led to dispute, contradictions, and finally to a formal banter to a wrestling-match. Lincoln was greatly averse to all this "wooling and pulling," as he called it. But Offutt's indiscretion had made it necessary for him to show his mettle. Jack Armstrong, the leading bully of the gang, was selected to throw him, and expected an easy victory. But he soon found himself in different hands from any he had heretofore engaged with. Seeing he could not manage the tall stranger, his friends

swarmed in and, kicking and tripping, nearly succeeded in getting Lincoln down. At this, as has been said of another hero, "the spirit of Odin entered into him," and putting forth his whole strength, he held the pride of Clary's Grove in his arms like a child, and almost choked the exuberant life out of him. For a moment a general fight seemed inevitable; but Lincoln, standing undismayed with his back to the wall, looked so formidable in his defiance that an honest admiration took the place of momentary fury, and his initiation was over. As to Armstrong, he was Lincoln's friend and sworn brother as soon as he recovered the use of his larynx, and the bond thus strangely created lasted through life. Lincoln had no further occasion to fight his own battles while Armstrong was there to act as his champion. The two friends, although so widely different, were helpful to each other afterwards in many ways, and Lincoln made ample amends for the liberty his hands had taken with Jack's throat, by saving, in a memorable trial, his son's neck from the halter.

This incident, trivial and vulgar as it may seem, was of great importance in Lincoln's life. His behavior in this ignoble scuffle did the work of years for him, in giving him the position he required in the community where his lot was cast. He became from that moment, in a certain sense, a personage, with a name and standing of his own. The verdict of Clary's Grove was unanimous that he was "the cleverest fellow that had ever broke into the settlement." He did not have to be constantly scuffling to guard self-respect, and at the same time he gained the good will of the better sort by his evident peaceableness and integrity.

He made on the whole a satisfactory clerk for Mr. Offutt, though his downright honesty must have seemed occasionally as eccentric in that position as afterwards it did to his associates at the bar. Dr. Holland has preserved one or two incidents of this kind, which have their value. Once, after he had sold a woman a little bill of goods and received the money, he found on looking over the account again that she had given him six and a quarter cents too much. The money burned in his hands until he locked the shop and started on a walk of several miles in the night to make restitution before he slept. On another occasion, after weighing and delivering a pound of tea, he found a small weight on the scales. He immediately weighed out the quantity of tea of which he had innocently defrauded his customer and went in search of her, his sensitive conscience not permitting any delay. To show that the young merchant was not too good for this world, the same writer gives an incident of his shop-keeping experience of a different character. A rural bully having made himself especially offensive one day, when women were present, by loud profanity, Lincoln requested him to be silent. This was of course a cause of war, and the young clerk was forced to follow the incensed ruffian into the street, where the combat was of short duration. Lincoln threw him at once to the ground, and gathering a handful of the dog fennel with which the roadside was plentifully bordered, he rubbed the ruffian's face and eyes with it until he howled for mercy. He did not howl in vain, for the placable giant, when his discipline was finished, brought water to bathe the culprit's smarting face and doubtless improved the occasion with quaint admonition.

A few passages at arms of this sort gave Abraham a redoubtable reputation in the neighborhood. But the principal use he made of his strength and his prestige was in the capacity of peacemaker, an office which soon devolved upon him by general consent. Whenever old feuds blossomed into fights by Offutt's door, or the chivalry of Clary's Grove attempted in its energetic way to take the conceit out of some stranger, or a canine duel spread contagion of battle among the masters of the beasts, Lincoln usually appeared upon the scene, and with a judicious mixture of force and reason and invincible good-nature restored peace.-From "Abraham Lincoln, a History,” published by the Century Co., New York.

LINCOLN READS LAW.

For a short time Abraham Lincoln owned a store in New Salem but

he did not prosper. Dennis Hanks says he was too honest. People always got the better of him in a trade. He liked to talk to people rather than to sell them goods. He had begun to study law and read books when he ought to have been attending to business. He failed and was greatly in debt. It took a long time to pay his debts but they were all paid.

He entered the Black Hawk war as captain of the company raised in his county. He learned surveying and worked at it for several years. He became a candidate for the Legislature and was defeated. The next time he was elected. The speech which follows made during his first campaign for the Legislature shows how honorable was his ambition and how honestly and plainly he could talk to the people.

LINCOLN'S AMBITION.

[From an address to the people of Sangamon county, issued March 9, 1832.] "Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young, and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have ever remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the country; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."

BEGINS THE PRACTICE OF LAW.

When he came home from the Legislature he went at the study of law in earnest. A great lawyer in Springfield, Mr. J. T. Stuart, loaned him books, Lincoln often walking from New Salem to Springfield, a distance of twenty miles, to borrow them. When he was ready to begin to practice law he went to Springfield and formed a partnership with his friend, J. T. Stuart. He wanted to rent a room, but to do so he had to buy some furniture. Mr. Joshua Speed, the store keeper, told him it would cost about seventeen dollars. Lincoln said, "It probably is cheap enough, but cheap as it is, I have not the money to pay. But if you will credit me until Christmas and my experiment here as a lawyer is a success I will pay you then. If I fail in that I will probably never pay you." Mr. Speed says: "His tone was very sad and when I looked into his face, I thought then as I think now, I never saw a face so gloomy and sad." Mr. Speed said to him that he had a large room and a wide bed and if he would share it he would be welcome. Lincoln asked where his room was, and when told that it was up above the store,